On Sunday, August 1, 2004, 2:31:57 PM, David Funk wrote:
On Sun, 1 Aug 2004, Jeff Chan wrote:
(Chaffing was a term I heard used Friday by Microsoft researcher Geoff Hulten at the CEAS conference; don't know if he coined it.)
RADAR was effectivly invented during WW-II (1940-1945) as an important tool to detect enemy aircraft at night or in cloudy skys for aiming anti-aircraft guns. One of the counter-measures developed was for the aircraft to release bunches of aluminum foil streamers to create fake echos and fool the RADAR allowing the planes to evade the AA fire. The name for those foil streamers was 'chaff' so using them to evade detection was 'chaffing'.
Yes, I was aware of the anti-radar use, but hadn't heard the term applied to spam URIs before. :-) On the other hand I may not keep up with all the anti-spam literature.
Chaff in the radar context probably came from the stuff left over from grain harvesting after the grain is removed. Presumably the foil strips reminded of that extra stuff, which was often separated by throwing the crushed husks and grain kernels into a breeze. The kernels fall to back earth quickly and the husks float away in the wind. The empty gain husks are known as chaff and the foil strips floating in air probably were reminiscent of them. You guys in Iowa probably all use machines to separate your gain from chaff now, but in the old days it was done by tossing the stuff into the air. :-)
Jeff C.