Massively complicated but awesome idea

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Master Baiter Joined: 05 Aug 2006 Posts: 213

Herb Sewell

[quote]This idea has been churning in my head ever since it was brought up. The autobaiter doesn't have to be all that "smart". With a large library of bait responses available[/quote]

large library of bait responses sounds good !

Quote:

timer example:
baiter detected, wait 6 hours, send from library of initial responses
2 days later, send from library #2 (first round responses)
2.5 days later, send another froim library #2
4 days later, library #2 again
5 days later trash files
6 days later library #3, sidetracking questions
7 days later etc, etc

this is exactly the code is going to work and the alice AI from http://www.alicebot.org would just make the replies more "human" like otherwise the responses will be very same - using alice would make them marginally different with just enough differences to keep the mugus occupied

Quote:

The detection part could be as simple as detecting replies or absence...

More b-storming on my part....

yep another good idea

i am tagging all the good ideas over here with a blue tag

Master Baiter Joined: 05 Aug 2006 Posts: 213

PART 2 COMPLETE : SMTP server installed and all downloaded email using freepops is being tagged correctly and being send to another mailbox

IP Freely idea implemented and is working very nicely

now i can have any mailbox or catcher - make it a part of my downloader
download all the mail - and shift only type 419 mail to another mailbox for further "processing"

your catcher is beeing spammed ? no need to worry the autobaiter will not respond to spam

PART 5 PARTIALLY COMPLETE : the smtp server required to send the email is working properly

now i need some mail to send to the mugus - working on the code that will generate that mail using ideas suppilied by IP Freely and Herb Sewell and justjay

i am working on PART 4 and PART 3,
part 3 should be easy....
part 4 is going to take some time to implement

Master Baiter Joined: 05 Aug 2006 Posts: 213

PART 4: requires some help

am testing out the autoresponder with "intelligence"

say you mail the bot in the morning it will respond with "good morning"
at night it will say "good evening"

basic stuff is working - but i need quite a bit of data before i can open this part for the baiters to test and comment upon, this feed back would go a long way to make the bot human

1. some one has to think the various "generic" steps of the mugu baiter conversation
2. some one has to look up the completed baits section and find the appropriate replies matching the steps
3. make multiple personalities of responses - i think 10 for starters should be enough.

Posted: Fri Mar 30, 2007 3:51 am

This is just a capital idea. I have no friggin' clue what any of that technical stuff means, but I love it!

Posted: Fri Mar 30, 2007 3:57 am

@nobody
Well, separate chunks. "A" type sentences, then "B" type sentences, then "C" and an ender.

Each personality could have several of each (and that might be the best way to store them).

Like a text file:

Code:

#name:Skippy
#utter wacko
.generic
A:
Heya champ, wuzzup?
Oh, what a day it's been!
<etc>
B:
Ok, what do I need to do next?
I read your mail. What do I need to do?
Instruct me, oh great one!
<etc>
C:<etc>
.lottery scam
A:
A lottery? When did I enter that?
Oh neat, that sounds cool. I don't know how I won, but that's cool!
B:
How do I go about doing that, then?
.signature
Sincerely,<br><br>Skippy

Could make:

Code:

Heya champ, wuzzup? I read your mail. What do I need to do?

Sincerely,

Skippy

and

Code:

A lottery? When did I enter that? How do I go about doing that, then?

Sincerely,

Skippy

....ok, that's enough for an example, I think. Having it be open-ended for people who REALLY like typing, and have it take one of each letter, then craft responses at random. Now, just need a good way to do higher-level responses, I guess. And a way to put in "good morning/evening" in say, "A" level would be a nice touch.

Something like that would be a good way to have modular personalities. And people can write their own easily, so there wouldn't be any ONE way to tell if it was a reponder, a baiter, or the autobaiter. And people can edit, trade and share response files freely.

Also, making it something like sourceforge... how could that hurt? People would have to register and prove competence before they were given access to the source, I think, and as far as compiling it, if a mugu can do that, we have bigger problems.

Can you make it download off of gmail, and distinguish from several dozen different addresses forwarding to the gmail?

Posted: Fri Mar 30, 2007 4:07 am

At least it'll be simple to test! Cool

Posted: Sun Apr 01, 2007 8:22 am

Note: It occurred to me that the thing should probably deal with lads switching email accounts for whatever reason.

If it receives a mail from an unknown, it should search for a near-hit on it's current address list, and ask why they switched, or maybe just switch over if it's close enough.

If it doesn't find a match, it should just give a "eh, who are you?" response. If it does that, there should be a LARGE amount of randomization... to prevent testability. Heck, maybe it shouldn't do that period.

Posted: Sun Apr 01, 2007 12:06 pm

I will work this week on pages, or paragraphs of generic responses. Who was it that coined the term "Artfully vague"? Was it Milton Erickson or Richard Bandler? I'll look. Anyways, I'll work on that this week.

Posted: Sun Apr 01, 2007 12:30 pm

Check this idea out - of course this is jumping way ahead - it could after years of refinement - spit out trophies ! - or, at least deliver pre-worked over and conditioned mugus for your safaris, art baits, torture racks, who knows what !

It could sense when it needs human intervention and ask us what to do to a certain mugu or group of mugus.

It could split test different "recipies" and optimize.

It could collect hard data to analyse

It could be the "Model A" of scambaiting. Put the mugus on an assembly line right into the meat grinder.

And it's not like a wrong computer response will instantly twig. Honestly, I usually twig them intentionally from getting bored and when I do it always takes a couple of e-mails or more to do that.

Scrooge McDuck was the pioneer in this field. LOL LOL

Posted: Sun Apr 01, 2007 1:19 pm

Why not look to the vlads for inspiration. This is pretty much the technique they use for their romance baits using The Bat!, pre existing scripts and macros to change the names.

Posted: Sun Apr 01, 2007 7:55 pm

As a tool to get lads off script, it could also work quite well. Having it get that far, then dump them off on you for the good parts would be easier to implement than a full baiting regimen.

Still, a trophy generator... that would be really cool! Even if only 1 in 1000 lads actually makes it there, it would be simple to automate a few thousand lads.

My original idea was to culminate a sea of random email addies controlled by a few autobaiters, with no way to tell if they were real people or not before the 10th email or so. If each lad went from answering 50 scams a day, to answering 500 or so, I imagine the quality of their services would be impacted negatively. Twisted Evil

Sure, you can try and strike at the ogas and ignore the footsoldiers, but e-napalming the pawns could be fun too.

Posted: Sun Apr 01, 2007 7:56 pm

@nobody:

What kind of formats are you looking for those three things in?

Posted: Sun Apr 01, 2007 10:18 pm

OK, guys and girls, this morning I said I would be working on generating responses this week and I will. Before I finally crashed, i busted out the ol' note pad and came up with lots of good stuff:

I envision the core (big chunk) logic scanning the incoming scam e-mail, and classifying it as to type of scam. (check mule, lottery, next of kin, sick relative, etc) Then it would apply a "recipie" for cooking the bait. As the bait progresses, it could branch off to different tasks according to points detected from scammers' mails.

Here are some of the items it would want to detect. This list contains not only things to classify the scam, it would also give the program information on what to do next.

Things to detect:
Scammers' (claimed) identity, male, female, lawyer, religious leader, nationality of origin
scammer is pleased
scammer is unhappy
scammer types in all caps
scammer vocabulary, writing style
scam e-mail size
scammer has website
scam mail contains attachments, attachment type
request for baiters' address, phone, other info
request of baiter to fill out form
scammer states baiter has been absent
mention of gold, trunk boxes, couriers, fees
scammer advises confidentiality
scammer warns of scam
scammer claims to be poor, rich,
scammers' IP matches other scam characters
statment of time constraint

Here are some "ingredients" of the recipie. The program would apply these modalities according to recipie selected:

Opener
statement of happiness/sadness
early questions
early statements (could be on point or totally off topic to scam)
sending junk files
advice to scammer re: junk files
resending of junk files
partial capitulation, i.e. sending "victim" personal info, but incomplete
same as above, but mostly complete
mid bait questions
mid bait non sequitur type statements
full release of (baiter) (fake) info
non contact for a period of time
reveal of baiter apprehension
reveal of baiter trust
SLAPS, PUNISHMENT, PRAISES

the more experienced of this board can supply us with more points to detect and end-game ingredients (where I have much less experience)

Here are some more ingredients, these are designed as more advanced items to divert, distract and pull away from scripts and straight baits:

Religion (arguments, discussions, requirements)
Sex
Moral issues
interest in scammers personal life
baiter "confessions" (crimes, kinks)
neediness on baiters' part, smothering the scammer
forms to fill out
code words, paranoia
drugs, drug use (see crimes)
unexpected hardships on baiters' side
trash files!!
jokes, humor INSULTS
language barriers, culture clashes

OK, that's it for typing right now. I'll come back with more. I actually used to program PLC's for a living, I can pseudocode just about any task, it's the different languages (other than ladder logic and pbasic) I have problems with. LOL

Master Baiter Joined: 05 Aug 2006 Posts: 213

hey herbs "recipe" look good enough to keep all the mugus occupied
the difficult part is making all the spam assassin rules for making these classifications

my own philosophy is : keep it simple to program and for the user to use. in this case mugus....

the things to detect part will be a bit difficult but "The program would apply these modalities according to recipie selected: " is just perfect i will be working on just that right now - my idea is not to make the program very smart but just smart enough to take an email from the mugu and generate a response in english that is plain, relevant to the stage of transaction and make the mugu think that "something" is happening on the baiter side - this includes all the use of time constants and other minor details

Quote:

Things to detect:
Scammers' (claimed) identity, male, female, lawyer, religious leader, nationality of origin
- easy to detect barrister/religious leader - the sender field is searched for barrister but the rest of detection is difficult - specially male / female thing and nationality - too many variations

scammer is pleased
scammer is unhappy

again too many variations to detect!
scammer types in all caps
easy to detect!
scammer vocabulary, writing style
again too many variations to detect!
scam e-mail size
scammer has website
yes this can be detected can be auto submitted for the bank killers forum - but i would prefer that someone manually review sites before setting them up to take a abuse hit - mugus are known to use prefectly legal sites in their buiness
scam mail contains attachments, attachment type
request for baiters' address, phone, other info
request of baiter to fill out form
scammer states baiter has been absent
mention of gold, trunk boxes, couriers, fees
scammer advises confidentiality
scammer warns of scam
scammers' IP matches other scam characters

detection of all this is built into the program using some logic - see below to understand how this works
scammer claims to be poor, rich,
again too many variations to detect!

statment of time constraint
again too many variations to detect!

the logic for detection that i have come up is simple: using the various email addresses and chaining them together using replyto: headers in the email

mugu sends email from [email protected]

we generate the first reply and send the replyto:[email protected]

[email protected]

for second stage set replyto [email protected]
and so on... untill

[email protected]
..
..
[email protected] or whatever number of stages we think the be the mugu should jump through.

the bait would require a different email for every stage and the 10 baiting personas will be all having different email addresses

so total number of addresses = number of baiter personas + total number of stages per baiter persona. all the code is to be written in the "autoresponder" part where the responces will be generated.

this will make the system very flexible and give the code the ability to run in many machines in parallel if the need arises.

Master Baiter Joined: 05 Aug 2006 Posts: 213

Quote:

It could be the "Model A" of scambaiting. Put the mugus on an assembly line right into the meat grinder.

wish that could be done LOL

IP Freely:

Quote:

What kind of formats are you looking for those three things in?

IP Freely i am working on Herb Sewell's idea where the baiter has not got to be very smart - i am using a alice bot to generate the responses starting and/or ending sentences. but all the responce outline is previously known to the autobaiter.

Herb Sewell just wrote down all the necessary steps for the "recipe" am working on fine tuing them

to everyone : you can get you famous lines that has given you the most number of responces that you have used in the various stages in the baits as per the herbs' recipe and see your baiter persona being BORG'ED by the autobaiter - only first 10 are allowed - find your responces and paste them in this thread....

Master Baiter Joined: 05 Aug 2006 Posts: 213

IP Freely :

Quote:

Something like that would be a good way to have modular personalities. And people can write their own easily, so there wouldn't be any ONE way to tell if it was a reponder, a baiter, or the autobaiter. And people can edit, trade and share response files freely.

that is the basic idea : good modularity.... and the idea that baiter maintains his own responses and allowing for cross pollination of the best ideas is another one good thing to be done....

i see my code downloading the email and generating the responses and sending them away....

Quote:

Also, making it something like sourceforge... how could that hurt? People would have to register and prove competence before they were given access to the source, I think, and as far as compiling it, if a mugu can do that, we have bigger problems.

this would work but i am not able to digest the fact that mugus would be be given access to the idea that something like this exists - maybe i am just being paranoid but from what i gather that is one of the "better" baiter traits - i would give the code to anyone on the eater if he/she/it needs it! but puttng the code on source forge might be just like loosing out all the advantage of the autobaiter

Quote:

Can you make it download off of gmail, and distinguish from several dozen different addresses forwarding to the gmail?

gmail has a builtin spam detector which would stop many mail from reaching the autobaiter - i already have an smtp server running - i just need to create the correct email address - i would like to reqister a free domain so that gives me max control over the spam settings and the mail sending capablilties - a bit tedious to get off the ground with this one - but once done it should work like a fire and forget heat seeking missile, targeted at the mugus.

also since my smtp server has mail domainkeys support my mail would land in the inbox and not in the spam folder. the downloading part can be done nicely using freepops and the distinguishing part will have to be done by scanning the mail headers - shold not be a problem to: and from: headers are not mangled by google.

Posted: Mon Apr 02, 2007 4:29 am

There IS a logistical limitation in opening that many email accounts per "head" of the autobaiter. Confused

Good concept, but it seems a bit brute-forcey. Besides, you want new users to be able to start the thing up WITHOUT spending 3 hours just opening email accounts and forwarding them.

Having a "I can't deal with this" flag that the autobaiter uses, then it sends you an email with the conversation, and the reply you send back is sent to the mugu.
Workable if you're doing small to medium batches, but if you kick it up into high gear, a way to disable it and just mail the mugu "I don't understand" in a couple hundred different ways would be better.
The "I don't understand" baiter-email would be good for hashing out exactly what it has trouble dealing with, too.

Just pure simplicity would be a really good idea. Once they ask you for info, it gives it, and sets an "info given" flag, so it won't do it again, if they ask more than twice, it inquires why they don't have it and sends it again, then sets "second info given" and doesn't do it any more, just ignores it. Similar bits for other situations, which I could probably think of if I wasnt exhausted. Cool

Also, have a program setting to kick it over to the baiter once it gets to the western union bit, this would be a great tool to get a lot of lads to payment without actually bothering with the startup. And simpler to do than coding the rest. Laughing

Release it at this stage for evaluation mebbe, then start coding the "hold in limbo" system?

Master Baiter Joined: 05 Aug 2006 Posts: 213

IP Freely:

Quote:

If it receives a mail from an unknown, it should search for a near-hit on it's current address list, and ask why they switched, or maybe just switch over if it's close enough.

this is going to be a bit difficult because there are just too many variations to take care of

IP Freely:

Quote:

If it doesn't find a match, it should just give a "eh, who are you?" response. If it does that, there should be a LARGE amount of randomization... to prevent testability. Heck, maybe it shouldn't do that period.

this has to be done - the randomization part is taken care by alicebot but what about the "not match" part ? how do i go about it ? i need a pseudo code or a firm example how to do this. please help....

Posted: Mon Apr 02, 2007 4:40 am

I'm not sure how to write a fuzzy text matcher, and don't really know where to look. My last guy went from to . The reply-to led to the new one, but it would be nice to be able to link similar IPs (not very good indicators actually) and similar names- the addition of a number or letter, or incrementation of a number, or change of domain.

You can also look at the signature on the email itself for help, come to think of it. Ignoring the extra bitties added on by freemail providers though. Though my current guy has changed his a few times, it's liklier to be copy/paste in the first few mails when it's most kely to change. I hope. Cool

If it can't match it in those ways, it can either kick it over to the user for intervention from possible choices, or just be a victim confused by the changes and ask them.

I've been known to explain things badly, whap me if I keep doing that. Very Happy

I'm also going to bed tho, seeya tomorrow.

Master Baiter Joined: 05 Aug 2006 Posts: 213

Quote:

I've been known to explain things badly, whap me if I keep doing that.
I'm also going to bed tho, seeya tomorrow.

your wavelength is the same as mine ! never had a problem understanding what you were saying!

Quote:

There IS a logistical limitation in opening that many email accounts per "head" of the autobaiter. Confused Good concept, but it seems a bit brute-forcey. Besides, you want new users to be able to start the thing up WITHOUT spending 3 hours just opening email accounts and forwarding them.

ok how about this: all the email are generated from a single email address and they contain some keywords that tell my autobaiter that we are going to the next stage....

also spending 3 hours just opening email accounts and forwarding them.
- make it as simple as possible to setup an autobaiter as soon as possible so any baiter can setup one without too much trouble ....

Posted: Mon Apr 02, 2007 5:03 am

^^^^ Expecting the program to differentiate a scammers' different e-mails would be something to work on farther down the line. I would ignore that possibility until later and assume the scammer will always use the same e-mail address.

The part of the program that detects scammers push or branch points also is something that can be added/modified later, More important is an autobait backbone that can engage a scammer for a measurable amount of time first, even if it only triggers off of an initial scammer input. The program doesn't need to start automatically, it can run on e-mails fed into it via human at this point. The next steps would be to upgrade it to contain more features and make it "smarter". I.E. it has only one "recipie" that can engage a measurable percentage of mugus fed to it and a measurable amount of exchanges. Then, once you have tuned the recipie to a desired effect, you can introduce different recipies (maybe to a different class of scams)

It might be valuable to chose 1 type of scam to bait, such as Lottery or next of kin, since they seem to be the most popular. Or you could choose Check mule scams (just for instance) as they are likely to follow a more predictable path. Later, concurrent baits on unique scammers. Once we have a backbone of knowledge in this, we (you?) can introduce modules that more closely resemble ELIZA or ALICE components. Also, end-game components of the program will be easier to tackle with experience of designing and testing this program.

After a year or two of working on this thing, with the knowledge base of the baiters here, one program could concievably run thousands and thousands of concurrent baits. I am envisioning a future that could find scammers actually quitting in mass droves once this program gets big and powerful enough. OK, I AM a dreamer, but I see massive potential here.

Posted: Mon Apr 02, 2007 11:09 am

Quote:

hey herbs "recipe" look good enough to keep all the mugus occupied
the difficult part is making all the spam assassin rules for making these classifications

To clarify, I listed "ingredients" as much as I could think of at the moment. A "recipie" would select certain ingredients and send them in the order predetermined by the "recipie" which could be as simple as in a timed sequence triggered off of the initial email. It wouldn't necessarily contain all the ingredients (unless it was really going good LOL)
A sample recipie for a check mule scam might be something like:

@4hrs, opener#4, @2 days question # 27, @4 days, partial compliance#5, @5 days send full data #56, @ 6 days diversion #12, @ 7 days, diversion #4.
When the words Western Union are detected, jump to End Game loop.

You could alter this single recipie many ways by cycling through many slightly different ingredients of the same type. That way, if the library was large enough, the baiter wouldn't see the same response twice, or unless he was cycled through a lot of times.

The AI portion of the project or the ELIZA portion isn't as needed to make this program function (sort of like a PID loop when all that is needed is a thermostat) but I understand the challenge can be what makes it interesting and rewarding to write. A member here mentioned something about wanting to pull a scammer "off script". While that is the goal when you are baiting for trophys, Death threats, or general baiter entertainment, that *might* be a counterproductive aspect in this instance. As I saw it, the main goal is to consume mugu hours. Not sure if being on script or off script is better. It will take some time for Me to mentally digest that point, but I thought I'd throw it up for discussion.

Posted: Mon Apr 02, 2007 3:51 pm

IP Freely wrote:

... went from .... and similar names- the addition of a number or letter, or incrementation of a number, or change of domain.

Somewhere's ( past 2 weeks before really starting into 419 stuff) saw a webpage or site that was compiling known names, addresses, aliases, etc. Not (at that time quite following why they would, I just surfed on Embarassed