Slamming Spam: A Guide for System Administrators

Description:

Real Anti-Spam Help for System Administrators

In Slamming Spam, two spam fighters show you how to fight back—and win. Unlike most spam books, this one is written specifically for in-the-trenches system administrators: professionals who need hands-on solutions for detecting, managing, and deterring spam in Unix/Linux and/or Microsoft Windows environments.

The authors offer deep, administrator-focused coverage of the most valuable open-source tools for reducing spam's impact in the enterprise—especially SpamAssassin. Drawing on their extensive experience in developing and implementing anti-spam tools, the authors present expert insights into every leading approach to fighting spam, including Bayesian filtering, distributed checksum filtering, and email client filtering.

Coverage includes

• Step-by-step junk mail filtering with Procmail

• Protecting Sendmail, Postfix, qmail, Microsoft Exchange, and Lotus Domino servers from spam

• Making the most of native MTA anti-spam features, including whitelists/blacklists, DNS black hole services, and header checking

• Distributed checksum filtering solutions, including Vipul's Razor and Distributed Checksum Clearinghouse

• McAfee SpamKiller for Lotus Domino

• McAfee SpamKiller for Microsoft Exchange

• Implementing and managing SpamAssassin

• Implementing SMTP AUTH, providing effective outbound SMTP authentication and relaying with any mail client; and STARTTLS, encrypting outbound mail content, user names, and passwords

• Sender verification techniques, including challenge/response, special use addresses, and sender compute

• Anti-spam solutions for Outlook, Outlook Express, Mozilla Messenger, and Unix mail clients

Whatever your IT environment and mail platform, Slamming Spam's defense in-depth strategies can help you dramatically reduce spam and all its attendant costs—IT staff time, network/computing resources, and user productivity.

Table of Contents:

1. Introduction.

2. Procmail.

3. SpamAssassin.

4. Native MTA Anti-Spam Features.

5. SMTP AUTH and STARTTLS.

6. Distributed Checksum Filtering.

7. Introduction to Bayesian Filtering.

8. Bayesian Filtering.

9. Email Client Filtering.

10. Microsoft Exchange.

11. Lotus Domino and Lotus Notes.

12. Sender Verification.

Appendix A. Sender Policy Framework.

Appendix B. Reporting Spam.

Appendix C. Default SpamAssassin Ruleset.

Appendix D. SpamAssassin Command Line Interface Reference.

Appendix E. SpamAssassin Configuration File.

Appendix F. DSPAM.

Appendix G. References.