[BNM] SpamAssasin

Jack Moxley jack.moxley at futureplatforms.com
Fri Feb 2 14:32:28 GMT 2007 

Its a nice idea however, one man's spam is another man's route to penis 
enlargement.

Tom Hume wrote:
> 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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>>     
>
> --
> Future Platforms Ltd
> e: Tom.Hume at futureplatforms.com
> t: +44 (0) 870 0055924
> m: +44 (0) 7971 781422
> company: www.futureplatforms.com
> personal: tomhume.org
>
>
>

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