On 26 Nov 2002, at 9:23, Loy Pressley wrote:

> I received, this morning, an email message from "Mail Delivery Subsystem
> <[log in to unmask]> entitled "Returned mail: Host unknown (Name
> server: top.gif: host not found".  To my knowledge I never originated or
> sent a message to "top.gif".

  I recently received a cluster of "Returned mail" messages, because some
spammer had forged an address similar to mine (unfortunately, none of the
errors were in the domain portion of the address) as the origin of a batch
of spam.

  It may be as simple as that, although the fact that a probable filename
("top.gif") got seen as a hostname suggests that there were other problems
as well -- perhaps somebody trying to test/debug/configure a spam-sending
tool that isn't quite working yet.

  It might be interesting to see a full set of message headers....

David Gillett

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