List of frequently spoofed domains/addresses?

2009-05-10 Thread Kelly Jones
When one of our customers emails someone, we whitelist the recipient address so that the return email won't be blocked [1]. Some users foolishly whitelist ad...@paypal.com, so that phishing emails go right through. Where can I find a list of "frequently spoofed addresses" (or domains)? We can th

Running message through a single SA test

2008-12-03 Thread Kelly Jones
I want to run a message through ONE SpamAssassin test w/o the overhead of running all the tests. I realize many SA tests are just regexs (so I could use procmail or something), but this test is a meta test and it may change from time to time. Does SA have a "--run-just-this-test=FOO" option? --

Bad check_for_from_to_same code in EvalTests.pm?

2008-12-03 Thread Kelly Jones
SA doesn't use EvalTests.pm's check_for_from_to_same test, but part of the code looks like this: return 0 if (!length($hdr_from) || !length($hdr_to) || $hdr_from eq $hdr_to); Is that right? Shouldn't the 'eq' be 'ne'? -- We're just a Bunch Of Regular Guys, a collective group th

Trusting TLS for spamfighting purposes?

2008-10-06 Thread Kelly Jones
Can SpamAssassin negative score emails that are sent using TLS? I realize anyone (even spammers) can use TLS, but I tend to trust encrypting mail servers more than I do non-encrypting ones. However, I'm guessing all evidence of TLS usage has disappeared by the time SpamAssassin gets the message?

Disabling a shipped rule in SpamAssassin

2007-08-10 Thread Kelly Jones
How do I disable a rule in /usr/local/share/spamassassin/*.cf? I'm tempted to comment it out, but the headers say to not do that. If I put something in /etc/mail/spamassassin/local.cfg, I can override the definition of an existing rule (right?), but that doesn't let me delete a rule. If I wanted

Email service that does graylisting/razor/spamfiltering/etc?

2007-04-09 Thread Kelly Jones
I have about 20 domains, and any email to any of these domains ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) forwards to a single mailbox. I handle email for all these domains myself, but it's becoming a hassle: % dictionary attacks mean I often get the same spam repeatedly % I'm too scared to change my SMTP config (to

Tool for validating sender address as spam-fighting technique?

2007-03-10 Thread Kelly Jones
To fight spam, I want to validate the address (not necessarily in real-time) of the a given email sender. Is there a Unix tool that does this? The basics are simple: to validate "[EMAIL PROTECTED]", I connect to the MX record of wnonline.net and go as far as "RCPT TO" as follows: host -t mx wno

Submitting RBL blocks to SORBS + how to identify ADSL/etc blocks

2007-03-08 Thread Kelly Jones
I recently (~26 Feb 2007) submitted two RBL blocks to SORBS (85.93.37.128-85.93.37.191 and 86.212.217.0-86.212.217.255). My emails created 2 tickets on rt.sorbs.net, but the tickets remain "new", even though the autoreply said they should be handled in 24-48 hours. The tickets did get moved from t

Finding when a certain rule became part of SpamAssassin distribution

2007-02-02 Thread Kelly Jones
I'd like to find out when the (meta) rule RATWARE_OUTLOOK_NONAME was added to SpamAssassin (which version first included it as part of the standard distribution?). This rule isn't listed at "http://spamassassin.apache.org/tests_3_1_x.html"; (possibly because that page doesn't include meta rules?)

Blacklisting efficiently using "first and final" rules?

2007-01-17 Thread Kelly Jones
Blacklisting with SpamAssassin is easy: just add a rule with a high score. However, this seems inefficient, since SpamAssassin will still go through its entire ruleset to calculate a score. Is it possible to setup "first and final" rules in SpamAssassin. That is, rules that are: 1) checked befor

Which is more efficient: two regexp's or one regexp with alternation?

2007-01-16 Thread Kelly Jones
If I want to block subjects matching "foo" or "bar", is it more efficient to write two regexps or a single "foo|bar" regexp? I'd think a single regexp is more efficient, but SpamAssassin ships w/ rule-sets that have multiple rules. Given how many spams people get, even a small improvement in effi

Despeckling images for OCR and anti-spam purposes

2006-12-22 Thread Kelly Jones
Spammers are starting to put "speckles" in their images to defeat OCR-scanning plugins such as FuzzyOCR. I thought ImageMagick's -despeckle option would help, but it doesn't seem to, not even when applied multiple times, not even in conjunction with -monochrome. I want a filter that does this fo

Capturing regular expression while testing new rule?

2006-12-21 Thread Kelly Jones
Many people write test rules w/ small negative scores like this: header SUBJ_FOO_BAR_TEST Subject =~ /foo.*bar/ describe SUBJ_FOO_BAR_TEST Subject contains both "foo" and "bar" in that order score SUBJ_FOO_BAR_TEST -0.001 The logs will then show when SUBJ_FOO_BAR_TEST is hit. I want to go one s

Rule that negative scores emails from blackberry.com, not spoofers

2006-12-18 Thread Kelly Jones
How do I write a rule that negative scores emails "from" blackberry.com. In other words, where the reverse DNS of the IP address connecting to my mailserver matches the regex /.*blackberry\.com$/ The obvious: Received =~ /.*blackberry\.com$/ doesn't work, because someone could "HELO blackberry.

FuzzyOCR hashdb tagging commonly-used images like spacer.gif as spam

2006-12-17 Thread Kelly Jones
We turned on FuzzyOCR's experimental "hashdb" function, but had to turn it off again after it tagged the following images (hashes) as spam: 8:1:1:1::1:1:1:1:1 14:1:1:1::0:0:0:0:1 These appear to be "spacer.gif"-like images: small images commonly used in HTML messages for formatting purposes. Ha

Spamassassin doesn't ding sender for saying "HELO i-am-you"

2006-12-06 Thread Kelly Jones
Spamassassin has lots of tests for fake HELOs. If someone says "HELO hotmail.com", but aren't connecting from a Hotmail IP address, they get dinged (spam score is increased). Recently, someone connected our server, call it mx.xyz.com, and said "HELO mx.xyz.com". Spamassassin didn't ding it for do

Re: Percentage of email that is spam after filtering?

2006-11-25 Thread Kelly Jones
Thanks to everyone who is replying here. Additional replies/comments always appreciated. What started me thinking about this is this non-intuitive but mathematically valid "paradox" that Bookworm and others have noticed: If 95% of all email is spam, and I correctly tell users that I block 95% of

Percentage of email that is spam after filtering?

2006-11-24 Thread Kelly Jones
I know that most (90%+) email sent now is spam, but what are the numbers for people who use spam filtering? I realize it varies by user, sensitivity to false positives, tools used, etc, but do people who use spam filtering find that only 10% of the messages they receive are spam? 25%? 50%? higher

List of fake email addresses spammers use?

2006-11-23 Thread Kelly Jones
Spammers often spoof fake email addresses when sending email, eg "[EMAIL PROTECTED]". It's easy to tell this address is fake: host -t mx lycos.com lycos.com mail is handled by 10 rmail-alt2.lycosmail.lycos.com. lycos.com mail is handled by 5 rmail.lycosmail.lycos.com. lycos.com mail is handled