full-disclosure - Is the FBI using email Web bugs?

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Message-ID: <20040107183315.GB24509@SDF.LONESTAR.ORG>
From: petard at freeshell.org (petard)
Subject: Is the FBI using email Web bugs?

On Wed, Jan 07, 2004 at 12:34:58PM -0500, William Warren wrote:
> Astaro security Linux has a webproxy that has an option(which i use) to 
> block web bugs....:)
> 
How can it tell web bugs from any other HTTP requests? The only thing
that makes a URL contain a web bug is that I only sent it to you. So if
I control images.example.com, and I send you and only you an email
that includes the image

http://images.example.com/faces/smile.png

but on the server smile.png is a script that records information from
your HTTP request before generating an image of a smile, how does your
proxy distinguish my web bug from a normal image? They only look like
obvious web bugs if I need to track thousands of recipients. If I've
targeted you, you just can't tell.

Regards,

petard