March 7, 2003
The spam you received and deleted today may have contained a message to blow up a bridge or to bomb a store.
In a secret report obtained last week, details of an al Qaeda spam method were revealed. Messages are composed to resemble spam on the surface but underneath they contain al Qaeda instructions, questions and updates between agents.
For example, merely switching the positions of an invisible comment and a space can be the hidden key. The standard message has these elements in a particular, usually arbitrary, order but in spams to the al Qaeda agents they are reversed. Switching a space with the symbol for a space does not change the appearance of an HTML message, a popular way to send email. From within the flood of millions of spams that blanket the globe, the agents receive three spams. The second message has all relevant elements reversed relative to the first message, and this indicates the location of the bits to be transmitted. The third spam has only some elements reversed and these contain the code. Only by receiving both emails can the original message be determined but only the agents are sent all three spams. By this means the 1s and 0s of the message are hidden from everyone except people who receive the three messages. At least six switching methods are thought to exist, according to the report.
The method has the additional advantage that it wastes the time and money of millions of western computer users. Estimates range from $2 to $3 million is lost per spam. "A few months of this causes more economic damage than the loss of the World Trade Center."
"It's a very sneaky method and it goes right under the noses of the CIA and FBI who are looking for high flying communications," said an agent we contacted. "They even can take the spams from other spammers and modify them to send their messages. This would obscure the source and make regular spammers unwitting tools of the terrorists."
The lists of email addresses are obtained from regular Spamhauses and modified slightly.
The report points out that if spam were illegal everywhere, as it is in Europe, then the al Qaeda would lose an important way to communicate.
If you haven't figured it out by now, this page is a spoof! But it could well be true!
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