Strange email

[pentachris]

Got this in my inbox yesterday, and it's got me puzzled. When I forwarded it to my work address so I could look at it during down-time, it said there was a problem sending a jpg attachment. I didn't see any pictures or attached pictures. I use Thunderbird & AVG (virus scan turned up clean). Can anyone make heads or tails of this?

OK, looking at it now I see where the image should be (at the end of the body, right after "how easy it is to get along.")

The source for the image: <img
src="cid:part1.08050607.09060001@knology.net" border="0">

knology.net is my isp

Subject: How's yourself?
Date: Mon, 06 Dec 2004 09:38:27 -0500
From: Mimosa F. Unaltered <Aeneid@freil.com>
To: me <me@myisp.net>



Some kind of a comedian, are we?
Do not judge, and you will never be mistaken. Set a thief to catch a thief.

Maybe I'm lucky to be going so slowly, because I may be going in the wrong direction.I've always found that the speed of the boss is the speed of the team. Faith makes: The uplook good, the outlook bright, the future glorious. Beware, so long as you live, of judging men by their outward appearance. Vegetables are interesting but lack a sense of purpose when unaccompanied by a good cut of meat.
Democracy arose from men's thinking that if they are equal in any respect, they are equal absolutely.It is a wretched taste to be gratified with mediocrity when the excellent lies before us.

Those who cross the sea change only the climate, not their character.
Man is the only animal that learns by being hypocritical. He pretends to be polite and then, eventually, he becomes polite. Fidelity. A virtue peculiar to those who are about to be betrayed.Courage without conscience is a wild beast. Atheism is easy in fair weather. The fatter the flea the leaner the dog.

Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair the rest is in the hands of God.
I was a veteran before I was a teenager.

For truly it is to be noted, that children's plays are not sports, and should be deemed as their most serious actions.

A friend in power is a friend lost.

Communism is the corruption of a dream of justice.

Having leveled my palace, don't erect a hovel and complacently admire your own charity in giving me that for a home.

Until we meet again, may the good Lord take a liking to you.
An autobiography is a preemptive strike against biographers.
The anger of a person who is strong, can always bide its time.
Remain calm, serene, always in command of yourself. You will then find out how easy it is to get along.

M'a ssalama

[Budfred]

Well it looks terribly suspicious and clearly not intended for meaningful communication... Did you see how large that hidden jpg is??

[youngsw]

I beleive I have read in the past about byte code being ran from inside a jpeg or something along those lines. Makes you wonder if you were using OE if something nasty would have happened when that image got loaded into memory :-/

[pentachris]

No, I couldn't glean any more information about the image.

[Donn]

Lots of bizzare psycho-babble though:


"May the good Lord take a liking to you"

this would seem to indicate that "the good Lord" hasn't already; pardon the terrible pun, but that's a 'hell' of an assumption on the writer's part.

"The anger of a person who is strong, can always bide its time."

my understanding of all the religious books is that anger must be cleansed from the soul, not held to abide by one's strength. That strength is the means by which virtue abides.

"Those who cross the sea change only the climate, not their character."

Oh yeah? Says who? No one can do both?

"Beware, so long as you live, of judging men by their outward appearance."

Oh yeah, like how? Like by insisting that if they crossed the sea, then they could not have changed their character?

I thought we got over this in the 60s? Didn't a whole lot of rock stars and politicians go over this a few thousand times?

"Vegetables are interesting but lack a sense of purpose when unaccompanied by a good cut of meat."

Wow!! Really?!! Tell that to any farmer, let alone an organic vegetable gardener like moi'self. . . .ridiculous.

"A friend in power is a friend lost. "

Interesting. . . I thought a friend in power is a friend in power. If a friend in power is a friend lost, then, how do we make advances--individually and socially--by aligning with the weak and ineffectual? If the weak and ineffectual were able to get things done, why haven't they? If they were able to get things done, wouldn't they then be 'friends in power' whom we have lost?

Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Really. Hmmm, then absolute bread will mold absolutely becasue it is bread? Or because it gets mold on it? Power and corruption are two different things. If absolute power equals absolute corruption, then why doesn't absolute corruption . . . make bread?

And, for our grand finale, here is the battery for this vibrator:

"Having leveled my palace, don't erect a hovel and complacently admire your own charity in giving me that for a home."

Right. No thanks for your intellectual hovel, so don't send around anymore of these e-mails, and don't drive anymore planes or tanker trucks into my palace, while you're at it, and then tell me it's better for me, and it will 'cleanse the devils' from my world.

However, at least, thank God, he (or she) got this one right:

"Communism is a dream of the corruption of justice"

It was actually just a giant waste of time and resource--a dream of the corruption of EVERYTHING, still is, always will be.

:cool:

[pentachris]

I've figured it out. I went to my webmail (secure) and looked at it again. It told me there were non-secure items and would I like to view them? I said "no." I looked at the source code, and the jpg it references is on the server at myeleutheria.info, which is registered to Albert Jones of Worcester, MA (a known spammer).

I'm guessing that pulling that jpg (which, as best I can tell has no width or height and weighs in at 509 bytes) tells him he's got a valid email address.

[Donn]

and as far as a bug jumping out of that jpeg, I thought there was something familiar about that:

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996408

:cool:

[youngsw]

I knew I wasn't going crazy when I thought I heard about evil jpeg pictures :)