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Munging!

Posted: Thu Feb 17, 2005 2:41 pm
by Rat
Munging is the process of hiding words, links and e-mail addresses in web pages such that non-human readers (spambots!!!) can't read them.

Here's an interesting link (be sure to read pages 2 and 3 on advanced munging!!)
http://www.projecthoneypot.org/how_to_a ... ambots.php

Posted: Fri Feb 18, 2005 6:34 am
by quicksilver
Very useful page Rat 8)
I have noticed a few people using this technique , frontcode being one of them.
I wish they would all get together and shut down the spammers in all nations, but no doubt this would mean an end to free speech also.. lose , lose situation :x

Posted: Fri Feb 18, 2005 10:51 am
by Rat
Well now.... Everyone who has a web site can help fight spam. My site is one of the many that have joined Project Honeypot. What is it? Well, we place a Honeypot page on our websites and then embed invisible links to that page in all our other pages. Because the links are invisible to the casual browser it's mostly only crawlers and spambots that find the page. When the page is accessed the IP number of the visitor is sent to the central project site. The Honeypot page will also contain an e-mail address (sometimes visible, sometimes not) which is faked and unique for each visitor. These addresses are also kept by the project site. Then we wait. If the project receives mail to one of the addresses in it's database it knows it when the E-mail address was harvested.... and, because the addresses are unique for each visit... it also knows which IP was involved.
The Project was started a few weeks ago by http://www.unspam.com and has already issued nearly 64,000 faked addresses resulting in over 2100 spams messages. Over 1200 spam servers and over 390 harvesters (the nasty people!!) have been identified.

Got a web site? Get involved! If you'd like to know more please contact me.

Posted: Fri Feb 18, 2005 11:24 am
by quicksilver
Rat thats a great idea , I,ll drop a few hints as I visit other forums, this sounds like its going to take off in a big way :D
Nice to know that we havent all got to sit and take this sort of thing, I get 100 peices of junk every week, so I,m all for it .

Re: Munging!

Posted: Sat Sep 21, 2013 9:00 am
by Rat
Update.

Project Honeypot is still running strong 8 years later. Here's a link to some statistics:

http://www.projecthoneypot.org/statistics.php

Also, I had a look at some of my own personal statistics and it really is fascinating....
This guy 81.144.138.34 has been crawling addresses with a spider for over a year and last crawled my honey-pot... today!
The IP is also home to a mail server and dictionary attacker (running for 4 years) based in the Staines/Slough area of the UK. The spam it sends out obviously comes "from" various "people" but most often it appears to use the names "Zane Gay" or "Lori Avery". The spider has been seen 28,333 times and the mail server has sent my honey-pot addresses 26 mails and 6 dictionary attacks. And that's just one little machine. My addresses have so far attracted 76,787 spam messages, 45 of them this week! Best of all, at least 13 people have joined the scheme after clicking on the linked badge in my signature file. :D

Re: Munging!

Posted: Tue Mar 01, 2016 12:27 pm
by Moon8654
The term munging probably derives from the acronym mung (pronounced just as it looks), which stands for "mash until no good." It may also derive from the hackers' slang term munge (pronounced MUHNJ), which means "to alter information so it is no longer accurate."

Re: Munging!

Posted: Fri Mar 18, 2016 10:33 am
by moongirl
Moon8654 wrote:The term munging probably derives from the acronym mung (pronounced just as it looks), which stands for "mash until no good." It may also derive from the hackers' slang term munge (pronounced MUHNJ), which means "to alter information so it is no longer accurate."

Methinks this may be a Bot!

Re: Munging!

Posted: Wed Oct 12, 2016 5:02 pm
by Rat
He might be.
I'm not.

Re: Munging!

Posted: Sun Oct 16, 2016 3:03 am
by Layzie Bone
Nope, definitely not a bot.

How have you been Rat? Good to hear from you and everyone else after however long it has been...

Re: Munging!

Posted: Thu Dec 08, 2016 2:01 pm
by moongirl
Rat wrote:He might be.
I'm not.
Rat! Good to see your post! :wink: