What does "3D" mean in all these HTML tags?

[JonB]

I've looked at the HTML code in a lot of the recent Spam I've gotten, and I see consistent addition of "3D" in the tags and attributes.

for example

<a href=3D"http://****.org">
<img border=3D"0" src=3D"http://****/fn.gif" width=3D"664" height=3D"479"></a></p>

right after the = but before the quotations.

What does it do? I couldn't find anything about it.

 

[Mitzi]

It just looks like a cheap attempt to fool spam filters, how exactly I couldn't say.

 

[CTho9305]

foreign character sets barfing on quotes?

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

Originally posted by: CTho9305
foreign character sets barfing on quotes?

Hm, that could be likely, 3D could be the hex value of some data it doesn't understand.

What are you using to view this html? Could you check if it happens in other apps too?

 

[notfred]

hex value 3D is the equals sign in ascii.

 

[JonB]

Sure enough, 3D is hex for the equal sign. Looks like my SPAM buddies are putting double "equals" into their code. The 3D always follows the equal character.

thanks, guys (and to notfred)

 

[Mitzi]

Originally posted by: notfred
hex value 3D is the equals sign in ascii.

Ahh..interesting!

Well done for sussing that one out!

/hands cookie...

 

[rainypickles]

when i save files in IE into a mhtml format (images and all in one file), all the equal signs turn into 3D. so maybe the saved the page and sent it off.

 

[Nocturnal]

 

[HJB417]

It depends on the 'content-transfer-encoding' value of the mime part in question. If it's 'quoted-double', then all characters outside a given ascii range are converted to hex and prefixed with a '='. When you look at the encoding of an email that has a quoted printable mime section, you'll see a lot of '='. When you open the email in an email viewer like outlook, netscape our eudora, it should parse the mime part and automatically replace the '=XX' values with their ASCII proper ascii characters. I think that's how it goes. I only know this because I've been developing a mime parser class @ work.

 

[JonB]

Since it seems most common in my incoming SPAM, I have added =3D to my spam filter.