NOTE: This message is being cross-posted to both amavis-user and devel-spam.
Lately, there has been quite a bit of discussion about animated GIFs (also APNGs) and how to scan them for SPAM. This discussion is taking place on the FuzzyOCR mailing list: http://lists.own-hero.net/mailman/listinfo/devel-spam The result of which has become a very technical discussion about frame selection and scanning. As most of you probably realize there are two primary challenges right now with image spam: One is the use of animation techniques to obscure the SPAM message and make it difficult to find. The second is devising a strategy to fight the use of OCR-fooling techniques and adapting the techniques we've learned from text SPAM. For those of us that are willing, it would be wonderful to reduce the struggle to only one. Specifically, a mail administrator should be able to respond to or impose organizational mail policies regarding animated GIFs/APNGs at the mail-server level. Let's get to the point: It would be great to be able to "flatten" or "display-the-last-frame" or eliminate completely any animated graphic format as an option in amavisd-new. This would involve: - a configuration option in amavisd.conf (filter, flatten, last-frame) - performing a simple check to test for the use of animation in an inline graphic (there only two formats that I am aware of right now -- GIF, APNG) - calling of an external helper program such as gifsicle or ImageMagik to alter the inline image (or remove it) within the e-mail Knowing that animated images have been handled, we can significantly reduce the amount of work that plugins like FuzzyOCR have to perform. For example, no "deoptimizing" of frames would have to be performed at the scanner level, no complex frame selection algorithm would be needed, and only one OCR scan would be necessary (hopefully). Of course, this functionailty of FuzzyOCR would still be optionally available for those that need or want animated graphics in e-mails and were willing to sacrifice the CPU to have them. I am willing to assist with the development of this feature. However, I want to get some ideas and comments from Amavis users and developers. Please let me know what you think of this idea. Thank you, Cory Visi ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Using Tomcat but need to do more? Need to support web services, security? Get stuff done quickly with pre-integrated technology to make your job easier Download IBM WebSphere Application Server v.1.0.1 based on Apache Geronimo http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=lnk&kid=120709&bid=263057&dat=121642 _______________________________________________ AMaViS-user mailing list AMaViS-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/amavis-user AMaViS-FAQ:http://www.amavis.org/amavis-faq.php3 AMaViS-HowTos:http://www.amavis.org/howto/
