From Spam Tools
From: | "Seth Goodman" <sethg@GoodmanAssociates.com> |
Date: | Thu, 12 Aug 2004 14:09:07 -0500 |
Reply-To: | In Reply To: |
> From: Ronald F. Guilmette
> Sent: Thursday, August 12, 2004 1:21 PM
<...>
> There's no problem at all with that idea. The only problem
> is that with respect to the Outlook personal address list
> and its contents, I have the same exact problem as I
> originally stated I had for the Outlook `Sent' folder,
> i.e. I have no idea of its internal format, and also, I am
> not aware of any open source software tools to read and
> decode those address book files. So if anybody knows of
> any open source tool which can perform THIS job, I would
> very much like to be informed about that also.
open source != MS
Good luck on that one.
> >This feature was apparently added for the convenience
> >of virus writers, who it appears were one of the key groups
> >that set the design requirements for this product,
>
> Good point.
>
> So if I want source code for a software tool that can extract
> addresses from a personal Outlook address book, I guess that
> I should just go out and hire a virus writer! Hummm.
> I would have no problem with that. At least this would give
> them some honest work for a change... keeping them
> off the streets and out of trouble for a short while.
>
> So now, where does one post a `HELP WANTED' ad for a virus writer?
They probably know more about the innards of Outlook than Microsoft
does. I really like the idea of hiring a virus writer for honest work,
but I'd still watch my back. You can take the boy out of the city ...
You've really hit on a great idea, though.
If you want some guidance on the undocumented guts of Outlook, try Mark
Hammond at the Spambayes project. He was the lead in taking their (open
source) Bayesian filter (Python for both 'nix and 'doze) and integrating
it with Outlook. Prior to that, and for all other mail clients,
Spambayes used a browser-based interface. IMHO, the integration job was
very well done. The project is open source, so you can see how they
dealt with Outlook's non-standard (surprise!) message store. As part of
the MS insecurity through obscurity program, Outlook destroys all the
MIME armor of a message before storing it in non-RFC2822 format, leaving
you to guess what it previously looked like. The Spambayes crowd has
developed standalone utilities for exporting an Outlook message store
into normal mbox files, which does the guessing for you. At the very
least, looking at their code will show you what you're up against.
--
Seth Goodman
IECC Searchware 1.3