[BNM] SpamAssasin

Fri Feb 2 14:16:06 GMT 2007

Given that lots of spam messages are the same, would it not be  
possible for me to share my "spam settings" with others I know and  
trust - such that if someone I trust marks a message as spam, my mail  
client (when it receives the same message) can also do so.

At least that way we spread the load of dealing with this stuff.

On 2 Feb 2007, at 13:54, Pete Dowdell wrote:

> Guy Tierney wrote:
>> Ok I get most of that but SpamAssasin here is pretty crappy - it  
>> totally is
>> missing those nasty penny stocks ones (that have a GIF attached with
>> squiggly lines on) and generally is pretty poor so we enquired about
>> upgrading it. This are the responses from out techies...
>>
>
> That's the next level of armament in the war...and it is very hard to
> filter this new generation of spam, as the content you need to scan is
> embedded in the image, and the rest of the mail is just a container,
> shaped to make it as slippery as possible for the filter.
>
> The main defence against this type of spam is black lists.  In my
> experience I see the an hour or two of life of a new spam source like
> that before it is listed and thereafter canned by SA.
>
> The only other measure afaik is OCR: this is technically do-able  
> but the
> performance hit on the mail server is huge.  This also introduces a  
> new
> arms race in the same vein as captcha filters as spammers make the
> embedded text hard for OCR processing.
>
> If you can find a good 3rd parth spam filter relay solution, that  
> sounds
> best for you.  This would only require a change to the MX field of  
> your
> domain DNS and some configuration of your mail client to filter the
> forwarded mail - fairly painless stuff.  If you do decide to go this
> way, do report back I would be very interested to hear about your
> experiences.
>
> Pete
>
>
>> "I've checked what version of spam assassin is on some of our  
>> other more
>> recently set up plesk servers and on the most recent version of  
>> plesk this
>> is running spam assassin version 3.0.6 however this is also on a  
>> different
>> operating system. In the last year we have moved from using  
>> freeBSD to
>> fedora core 4 because whilst freeBSD is a very robust operating  
>> system we
>> have found recently that plesk support for different versions of  
>> plesk
>> requires different versions of the freeBSD operating system  
>> because of this
>> I wouldn't recommend upgrading the version of plesk because the  
>> most recent
>> version of plesk has versions for freeBSD 4.11, 5.5, and 6.1 and  
>> the version
>> your server tomcat is at is 5.3.
>> I'm not sure if it is possible to just upgrade the spam assassin  
>> component I
>> have emailed our software vendors to ask if this is possible if it  
>> is not I
>> will ask if any of the above versions of plesk 8.1 are compatible  
>> with
>> freeBSD 5.3.
>> ---------
>> I've had a response back from plesk, it's not possible to upgrade  
>> spam
>> assassin without upgrading plesk as the 2 pieces of software are very
>> heavily integrated. I'm waiting a further email to find out from  
>> SWSoft
>> which specific o/s version of plesk is compatible with the o/s on  
>> your
>> current server."
>>
>>
>> So my partners are thinking of outsourcing or spam filtering to a  
>> company
>> that is doing very well on tests but it seems silly when we have  
>> the tools
>> (although maybe not the knowledge yet) to deliver this in-house.
>>
>> Does that help explain the situation?
>> Gt
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> on 2/2/07 1:15 pm, Pete Dowdell at bnm at stridebird.com wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Guy Tierney wrote:
>>>
>>>> I was chatting recently (read autumn) with someone about  
>>>> SpamAssasin and the
>>>> plug-ins involved to help it do its job properly as the the  
>>>> product itself
>>>> isn't much cop alone.
>>>>
>>>> We're running Plesk on our Tomcat server so it seems to be an  
>>>> obvious
>>>> choice.
>>>>
>>>> Can anyone point me in the direction of how to get the best from  
>>>> this
>>>> software and or where to get these plug-ins - I may have  
>>>> completely the
>>>> wrong end of the stick not being a techie so go easy on me and  
>>>> the tech
>>>> speak ;D
>>>>
>>>>
>>> You're not holding the stick in the right place at least...! ;)
>>>
>>> SpamAssasin : spam filtering system that operates when mail is  
>>> received
>>> on a mail server
>>> Plesk: web-based control panel for site hosting
>>> Tomcat: a JSP application
>>>
>>> To use spamasssasin you need it enabled on a mail server that  
>>> handles
>>> your mail: either as the destination server or more  
>>> sophisticatedly as a
>>> relay server.  It will label all mail filtered with a spam score,  
>>> and
>>> you then configure your mail server and/or mail client to take the
>>> appropriate action according to the additional labelling  
>>> spamassasin has
>>> applied to the message.
>>>
>>> Sooo, plesk may be able to help you but I doubt it.  Tomcat isn't  
>>> part
>>> of the equation at all.
>>>
>>> Pete
>>>
>>> PS...SA is a great system that is remarkably good at labelling spam.
>>> YMMV however, depending on configuration of your email hosting.   
>>> SA does
>>> multiple things to assess messages: black lists, bayes filtering,
>>> structure analysis etc.  But on a regular linux-y type  
>>> environment, it
>>> should just work (and well) straight after install without much  
>>> faff.
>>> phaff.  faf.
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
> -- 
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 
> --
> Peter Dowdell
> 07786 266 440
> pete at stridebird.com <mailto:pete at stridebird.com>
> stridebird <http://stridebird.com>
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