I'd like to export the spambot flood usenet posting headers to a
datafile for analysis, basically looking for regularities that can be
used for filtering. I don't see any obvious way to do this. The only
thing I found was a function to export an address book as an XML file.

Any ideas?

Thanks,

Joe Gwinn

On Mon, 11 Dec 2023 10:48:46 -0500, Joe Gwinn <joegwinn@comcast.net>
wrote:

>I'd like to export the spambot flood usenet posting headers to a
>datafile for analysis, basically looking for regularities that can be
>used for filtering. I don't see any obvious way to do this. The only
>thing I found was a function to export an address book as an XML file.
>
>Any ideas?

In Agent 8,
File | Save Messages As ...
will save the whole thing, including the headers (if configured to do
so), to a text file.

But it appears that the message body will always be included, so the
file may be rather ... large.

Note that I only tried it with one message. But it says "Messages", so
it might take several at one time.

This is not available from the message composition screen, which is
probably a sensible thing.
--
"Here lies the Tuscan poet Aretino,
Who evil spoke of everyone but God,
Giving as his excuse, 'I never knew him.'"

On Mon, 11 Dec 2023 10:48:46 -0500, Joe Gwinn wrote:

> I'd like to export the spambot flood usenet posting headers to a
> datafile for analysis, basically looking for regularities that can be
> used for filtering. I don't see any obvious way to do this. The only
> thing I found was a function to export an address book as an XML file.
>
> Any ideas?

> User-Agent: ForteAgent/8.00.32.1272

You can export headers (with or without bodies) to file using this
Agent command:

File >> Import and Export >> Export NZB File

This requires Agent 4.2 or later, so it is all good in your Agent 8.00.

The NZB file is an XML format with a .nzb extension. This might or
might not be suitable for your analysis.

The 2018 post here has some HTML code which can convert that NZB
file into an HTML table with the columns Lines/Subject/Author/Date.

Usenet link: <news:ks07hdpihrsjmt23pvuvrrkb6bmd55rb2g@4ax.com>
Google Groups: <https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt.usenet.offline-reader.forte-agent/OiYsQBjVfzg/Sh1hY1GwAAAJ>
Narkive link: <https://alt.usenet.offline-reader.forte-agent.narkive.com/p3HDCAlA.5>

If HTML is not suitable, you could load the HTML table into a
spreadsheet or re-save it as plain text.

--
Kind regards
Ralph Fox
🦊

The belly is not fill'd with fair words.

On Tue, 12 Dec 2023 08:18:41 +1300, Ralph Fox <-rf-nz-@-.invalid>
wrote:

>On Mon, 11 Dec 2023 10:48:46 -0500, Joe Gwinn wrote:
>
>> I'd like to export the spambot flood usenet posting headers to a
>> datafile for analysis, basically looking for regularities that can be
>> used for filtering. I don't see any obvious way to do this. The only
>> thing I found was a function to export an address book as an XML file.
>>
>> Any ideas?
>
>> User-Agent: ForteAgent/8.00.32.1272
>
>
>You can export headers (with or without bodies) to file using this
>Agent command:
>
> File >> Import and Export >> Export NZB File
>
>This requires Agent 4.2 or later, so it is all good in your Agent 8.00.
>
>The NZB file is an XML format with a .nzb extension. This might or
>might not be suitable for your analysis.
>
>
>The 2018 post here has some HTML code which can convert that NZB
>file into an HTML table with the columns Lines/Subject/Author/Date.
>
> Usenet link: <news:ks07hdpihrsjmt23pvuvrrkb6bmd55rb2g@4ax.com>
> Google Groups: <https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt.usenet.offline-reader.forte-agent/OiYsQBjVfzg/Sh1hY1GwAAAJ>
> Narkive link: <https://alt.usenet.offline-reader.forte-agent.narkive.com/p3HDCAlA.5>
>
>If HTML is not suitable, you could load the HTML table into a
>spreadsheet or re-save it as plain text.

Exporting NZB files to a text file does seem workable. Thanks for the
idea.

Although the NZB "XML" format isn't quite equal to XML, it looks
simple enough for a simple parser to find and extract the desired
data. Work continues.

Joe