Re: [Asrg] 1c. Analysis of Spam - biological approach

["Kurt Magnusson" <kmn_asgr at hotmail.com>]

> Yakov wrote:
> > Greg Wittel wrote:
> >
> > Anyone with a degree in bioscience here? Or willing to bring in someone 
> > knowledgeble? Any previous works in this area.
> I do not think this view has been taken before with spam (in
......
> I would add to this that this is similar in many ways to the analogies 
> drawn between real-world viruses/worms and computers viruses. Perhaps this 
> can be extended to spam.
Would oppose to that. Mainly because that viruses have a self-interest in 
expand to get control over it's environment, like an automata. I.e. the 
basic biological survival process. Som digital viruses and worms have the 
same functions, but a spam is totaly devoid of it. Spam simply can't 
"self-propagation" as a virus. It is dependent on the "work-order" of its 
creator. The virus doesn't care.

Spam is basically a economic function, i.e. to earn money to it's sender, 
not to dominate a ecological niche. Therefore spam in itself have today 
(except as a DoS function) no own interest or any internal function to take 
over the environment it thrives on, while the virus have. It is just a 
distributed "paper", with a content. Even if economy may look like viruses 
at times, there is significant differences. No, I would look at basic 
economic drivers as a model, something that is supported by those articles 
and interviews we have seen with spammers the last year.

The virus mutates to counteract environmental changes, while spam don't.  
All spams are still the same "paper" as on Spamfords time, a sellable 
content (a hoax is to sell something that don't exist :-) and a 
communication interface (usually a url/phone no). OK, we might persive them 
as changed over time because they are camouflaged nowerdays, but it is still 
the same active package in the center. A virus can change to something 
completely different, change ecological niches and so on.

Regards
Kurt Magnusson

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