Thread: Mailing list (lack of) spam filtering

Mailing list (lack of) spam filtering

From
"Greg Sabino Mullane"
Date:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: RIPEMD160


Here's another example of recent spam to the -bugs list.
If we need help setting up spamassassin, please let me
know. I can't imagine why we aren't catching items like this:

http://rafb.net/p/8UQ9Oy96.html

- --
Greg Sabino Mullane greg@turnstep.com
PGP Key: 0x14964AC8 200901221104
http://biglumber.com/x/web?pk=2529DF6AB8F79407E94445B4BC9B906714964AC8
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=IJG7
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Re: Mailing list (lack of) spam filtering

From
Alvaro Herrera
Date:
Greg Sabino Mullane wrote:

> Here's another example of recent spam to the -bugs list.
> If we need help setting up spamassassin, please let me
> know. I can't imagine why we aren't catching items like this:
> 
> http://rafb.net/p/8UQ9Oy96.html

I agree.  Our current situation is embarrasing.

Please Marc don't ask for specific headers.  The problem is not specific
emails.  The problem is that our setup in general is crap.  It's not
enough to just train Maia for a bunch of additional emails.

-- 
Alvaro Herrera                                http://www.CommandPrompt.com/
PostgreSQL Replication, Consulting, Custom Development, 24x7 support


Re: Mailing list (lack of) spam filtering

From
"Joshua D. Drake"
Date:
On Thu, 2009-01-22 at 13:20 -0300, Alvaro Herrera wrote:
> Greg Sabino Mullane wrote:
> 
> > Here's another example of recent spam to the -bugs list.
> > If we need help setting up spamassassin, please let me
> > know. I can't imagine why we aren't catching items like this:
> > 
> > http://rafb.net/p/8UQ9Oy96.html
> 
> I agree.  Our current situation is embarrasing.

How so? It seems to me that on the embarrassing meter this is about
-2000 in comparison to the fact that we still don't have in place
upgrades ;)

> 
> Please Marc don't ask for specific headers.  The problem is not specific
> emails.  The problem is that our setup in general is crap.  It's not
> enough to just train Maia for a bunch of additional emails.
> 

This email makes me wonder what our expectations really are. I am not
saying that our setup isn't crap. I actually don't have an opinion on
that.

What is an acceptable amount of spam delivery? How does that correlate
with acceptable amounts of false positives? Do the lists moderators get
more spam on the lists than on the their public emails? I am an announce
moderator and I don't get that much spam on that list. 

Does anyone have any potential solutions? We could use spamhaus but we
would have to be very careful because of the international nature of the
project. We could add SORBS that might help a bit... thoughts?

Thoughts?

Sincerely,

Joshua D. Drake




-- 
PostgreSQL - XMPP: jdrake@jabber.postgresql.org  Consulting, Development, Support, Training  503-667-4564 -
http://www.commandprompt.com/ The PostgreSQL Company, serving since 1997
 



Re: Mailing list (lack of) spam filtering

From
"Marc G. Fournier"
Date:
On Thu, 22 Jan 2009, Joshua D. Drake wrote:

> Does anyone have any potential solutions? We could use spamhaus but we
> would have to be very careful because of the international nature of the
> project. We could add SORBS that might help a bit... thoughts?

Right now, we are relying on spamassasin + greylisting ... way back when 
(I don't know how far back), we *had*:

#            reject_rbl_client dnsbl.sorbs.net,
#            reject_rbl_client relays.ordb.org,
#            reject_rbl_client opm.blitzed.org,
#            reject_rbl_client sbl.spamhaus.org,
#            reject_rbl_client list.dsbl.org,

Not sure when we removed, nor why, but someone at some point must have 
complained ...

I can re-add all of them, if ppl would like ... just say the word ...


----
Marc G. Fournier           Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org)
Email . scrappy@hub.org                              MSN . scrappy@hub.org
Yahoo . yscrappy               Skype: hub.org        ICQ . 7615664


Re: Mailing list (lack of) spam filtering

From
"Marc G. Fournier"
Date:
Greg, if you would like to look over how things are setup, I have no 
qualms about that, just email me offlist and I can give you access to look 
things over and make suggestions on how we can improve the setup ... I 
just checked, and we are running the latest version fo Spamassasin, as 
well as the 'rules_du_jour' is run once a day, but its possible I'm 
missing something obvious ...

... but, let's talk offlist and get you access so that you can do a review 
and point out anything I may have missed in the setup ...

----
Marc G. Fournier           Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org)
Email . scrappy@hub.org                              MSN . scrappy@hub.org
Yahoo . yscrappy               Skype: hub.org        ICQ . 7615664


Re: Mailing list (lack of) spam filtering

From
"Marc G. Fournier"
Date:
On Thu, 22 Jan 2009, Alvaro Herrera wrote:

> Please Marc don't ask for specific headers.  The problem is not specific 
> emails.  The problem is that our setup in general is crap.  It's not 
> enough to just train Maia for a bunch of additional emails.

Do a bit of research before you put in comments about what you really have 
no knowledge of ... specifically, do some research into exactly *what* 
Maia is ... what should be quite embarressing to you is just how fast you 
jump onto things you really know nothing about ...

I can subscribe to Greg's assertion that I'm missing something with the 
spamassassin setup, and will very happily work with him to see if we can 
tight it up further ... but *all* maia is is a front end to spamassassin, 
any spam scoring is done by Spamassassin itself ... Maia then takes that 
score and *quarantines* messages that score over a certain threshold, but 
Maia in no way manipulates that score ...

In fact, even the 'training' you elude to is a simple call to 'sa-learn', 
Maia just provides me the interface to go *through* emails vs reading them 
out of a mailbox ...

But, of course, if you did some research *first*, instead of running off 
at the mouth, you would have figured this out already on your own ...

Almost as bad erading yoru stuff as reading stuff from AlDev ... abotu as 
informed ...

----
Marc G. Fournier           Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org)
Email . scrappy@hub.org                              MSN . scrappy@hub.org
Yahoo . yscrappy               Skype: hub.org        ICQ . 7615664


Re: Mailing list (lack of) spam filtering

From
"Joshua D. Drake"
Date:
On Thu, 2009-01-22 at 13:28 -0400, Marc G. Fournier wrote:
> On Thu, 22 Jan 2009, Alvaro Herrera wrote:

> But, of course, if you did some research *first*, instead of running off 
> at the mouth, you would have figured this out already on your own ...
> 
> Almost as bad erading yoru stuff as reading stuff from AlDev ... abotu as 
> informed ...

O.k. guys that is enough. We are all team members here.

Joshua D. Drake


-- 
PostgreSQL - XMPP: jdrake@jabber.postgresql.org  Consulting, Development, Support, Training  503-667-4564 -
http://www.commandprompt.com/ The PostgreSQL Company, serving since 1997
 



Re: Mailing list (lack of) spam filtering

From
Bruce Momjian
Date:
Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> On Thu, 2009-01-22 at 13:28 -0400, Marc G. Fournier wrote:
> > On Thu, 22 Jan 2009, Alvaro Herrera wrote:
> 
> > But, of course, if you did some research *first*, instead of running off 
> > at the mouth, you would have figured this out already on your own ...
> > 
> > Almost as bad erading yoru stuff as reading stuff from AlDev ... abotu as 
> > informed ...
> 
> O.k. guys that is enough. We are all team members here.

I re-read Greg's original email and it seemed perfectly reasonable to
me.

--  Bruce Momjian  <bruce@momjian.us>        http://momjian.us EnterpriseDB
http://enterprisedb.com
 + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +


Re: [sysadmins] Mailing list (lack of) spam filtering

From
Scrappy
Date:
Yes, it was ... That is why I responded to *his* accepting any  
suggestions and/or guidance he could provide to improve the  
situation ...

Sent from my iPhone

On 22-Jan-09, at 14:48, Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> wrote:

> Joshua D. Drake wrote:
>> On Thu, 2009-01-22 at 13:28 -0400, Marc G. Fournier wrote:
>>> On Thu, 22 Jan 2009, Alvaro Herrera wrote:
>>
>>> But, of course, if you did some research *first*, instead of  
>>> running off
>>> at the mouth, you would have figured this out already on your  
>>> own ...
>>>
>>> Almost as bad erading yoru stuff as reading stuff from AlDev ...  
>>> abotu as
>>> informed ...
>>
>> O.k. guys that is enough. We are all team members here.
>
> I re-read Greg's original email and it seemed perfectly reasonable to
> me.
>
> -- 
>  Bruce Momjian  <bruce@momjian.us>        http://momjian.us
>  EnterpriseDB                             http://enterprisedb.com
>
>  + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +
>
> ---------------------------(end of  
> broadcast)---------------------------
> If the PostgreSQL.org mailing lists are down, use the auxillary list pgsysadmins@agliodbs.com


Re: [sysadmins] Mailing list (lack of) spam filtering

From
Bruce Momjian
Date:
Scrappy wrote:
> Yes, it was ... That is why I responded to *his* accepting any  
> suggestions and/or guidance he could provide to improve the  
> situation ...

I made a mistake thinking you were replying to Greg, but someone told me
the reply was about someone else, so I was wrong.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------


> Sent from my iPhone
> 
> On 22-Jan-09, at 14:48, Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> wrote:
> 
> > Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> >> On Thu, 2009-01-22 at 13:28 -0400, Marc G. Fournier wrote:
> >>> On Thu, 22 Jan 2009, Alvaro Herrera wrote:
> >>
> >>> But, of course, if you did some research *first*, instead of  
> >>> running off
> >>> at the mouth, you would have figured this out already on your  
> >>> own ...
> >>>
> >>> Almost as bad erading yoru stuff as reading stuff from AlDev ...  
> >>> abotu as
> >>> informed ...
> >>
> >> O.k. guys that is enough. We are all team members here.
> >
> > I re-read Greg's original email and it seemed perfectly reasonable to
> > me.
> >
> > -- 
> >  Bruce Momjian  <bruce@momjian.us>        http://momjian.us
> >  EnterpriseDB                             http://enterprisedb.com
> >
> >  + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +
> >
> > ---------------------------(end of  
> > broadcast)---------------------------
> > If the PostgreSQL.org mailing lists are down, use the auxillary list pgsysadmins@agliodbs.com

--  Bruce Momjian  <bruce@momjian.us>        http://momjian.us EnterpriseDB
http://enterprisedb.com
 + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +


Re: [sysadmins] Mailing list (lack of) spam filtering

From
Stefan Kaltenbrunner
Date:
Marc G. Fournier wrote:
> 
> Greg, if you would like to look over how things are setup, I have no 
> qualms about that, just email me offlist and I can give you access to 
> look things over and make suggestions on how we can improve the setup 
> ... I just checked, and we are running the latest version fo 
> Spamassasin, as well as the 'rules_du_jour' is run once a day, but its 
> possible I'm missing something obvious ...
> 
> ... but, let's talk offlist and get you access so that you can do a 
> review and point out anything I may have missed in the setup ...

a pretty simple question whould be to check if we are also running the 
latest *rulesets* for spamassassin (the are providing updated rulesets 
every few weeks which need to be installed using sa-update/sa-compile).
I could also provide a simple nagios plugin for checking this ...


Stefan


Re: [sysadmins] Mailing list (lack of) spam filtering

From
"Marc G. Fournier"
Date:
On Thu, 22 Jan 2009, Stefan Kaltenbrunner wrote:

> a pretty simple question whould be to check if we are also running the 
> latest *rulesets* for spamassassin (the are providing updated rulesets 
> every few weeks which need to be installed using sa-update/sa-compile). 
> I could also provide a simple nagios plugin for checking this ...

Simple answer: yes, I believe so ... part of the docs I went through for 
setting up Spamassassin was to setup a cron job:

01 00 * * * /usr/local/bin/rules_du_jour

which I believe(d) was supposed to do this update daily ...

... but, that said, I didn't realize there was a nagios plug in for this, 
but now that you mention it, I just looked at ports and see it ... let me 
get it installed and added to my internal monitoring, and will ping you if 
I have any questions about setting it up ...

----
Marc G. Fournier           Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org)
Email . scrappy@hub.org                              MSN . scrappy@hub.org
Yahoo . yscrappy               Skype: hub.org        ICQ . 7615664


Re: [sysadmins] Mailing list (lack of) spam filtering

From
Stefan Kaltenbrunner
Date:
Marc G. Fournier wrote:
> On Thu, 22 Jan 2009, Stefan Kaltenbrunner wrote:
> 
>> a pretty simple question whould be to check if we are also running the 
>> latest *rulesets* for spamassassin (the are providing updated rulesets 
>> every few weeks which need to be installed using 
>> sa-update/sa-compile). I could also provide a simple nagios plugin for 
>> checking this ...
> 
> Simple answer: yes, I believe so ... part of the docs I went through for 
> setting up Spamassassin was to setup a cron job:
> 
> 01 00 * * * /usr/local/bin/rules_du_jour
> 
> which I believe(d) was supposed to do this update daily ...
> 
> ... but, that said, I didn't realize there was a nagios plug in for 
> this, but now that you mention it, I just looked at ports and see it ... 
> let me get it installed and added to my internal monitoring, and will 
> ping you if I have any questions about setting it up ...

well rules_du_jour is deprecated for a while now. sa-update is by 
default using the official SA-update channel (which is more like a virus 
pattern update really) and can support other sources as well.
The Plugin I was talking about is specifically checking for new 
available patterns not if SA is up & running btw.




Stefan


Re: [sysadmins] Mailing list (lack of) spam filtering

From
Alvaro Herrera
Date:
Stefan Kaltenbrunner wrote:
> Marc G. Fournier wrote:

>> Simple answer: yes, I believe so ... part of the docs I went through 
>> for setting up Spamassassin was to setup a cron job:
>>
>> 01 00 * * * /usr/local/bin/rules_du_jour
>>
>> which I believe(d) was supposed to do this update daily ...

> well rules_du_jour is deprecated for a while now.

Yeah, I noticed that too while digging on it, and this could explain why
the filtering has been progressively worse.  Maybe just changing the
rule update mechanism would improve things again.

-- 
Alvaro Herrera                                http://www.CommandPrompt.com/
The PostgreSQL Company - Command Prompt, Inc.


Re: [sysadmins] Mailing list (lack of) spam filtering

From
Scrappy
Date:
Will look at sa-update when I get online in an hour or so ...

Sent from my iPhone

On 22-Jan-09, at 16:30, Stefan Kaltenbrunner <stefan@kaltenbrunner.cc>  
wrote:

> Marc G. Fournier wrote:
>> On Thu, 22 Jan 2009, Stefan Kaltenbrunner wrote:
>>> a pretty simple question whould be to check if we are also running  
>>> the latest *rulesets* for spamassassin (the are providing updated  
>>> rulesets every few weeks which need to be installed using sa- 
>>> update/sa-compile). I could also provide a simple nagios plugin  
>>> for checking this ...
>> Simple answer: yes, I believe so ... part of the docs I went  
>> through for setting up Spamassassin was to setup a cron job:
>> 01 00 * * * /usr/local/bin/rules_du_jour
>> which I believe(d) was supposed to do this update daily ...
>> ... but, that said, I didn't realize there was a nagios plug in for  
>> this, but now that you mention it, I just looked at ports and see  
>> it ... let me get it installed and added to my internal monitoring,  
>> and will ping you if I have any questions about setting it up ...
>
> well rules_du_jour is deprecated for a while now. sa-update is by  
> default using the official SA-update channel (which is more like a  
> virus pattern update really) and can support other sources as well.
> The Plugin I was talking about is specifically checking for new  
> available patterns not if SA is up & running btw.
>
>
>
>
> Stefan
>
> -- 
> Sent via pgsql-www mailing list (pgsql-www@postgresql.org)
> To make changes to your subscription:
> http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-www


Re: [sysadmins] Mailing list (lack of) spam filtering

From
"Marc G. Fournier"
Date:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1


'k, just ran:

/usr/local/bin/sa-update --nogpg; /usr/local/etc/rc.d/amavisd restart

Actually, that is what is now in cron to run every night at 22:59 .. from the 
command line, I added the -D option, and it seemed to do a bunch of processing 
... rules_du_jour now removed ...

See if that doesn't help ...

- --On Thursday, January 22, 2009 16:46:14 -0400 Scrappy <scrappy@hub.org> wrote:

> Will look at sa-update when I get online in an hour or so ...
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On 22-Jan-09, at 16:30, Stefan Kaltenbrunner <stefan@kaltenbrunner.cc> wrote:
>
>> Marc G. Fournier wrote:
>>> On Thu, 22 Jan 2009, Stefan Kaltenbrunner wrote:
>>>> a pretty simple question whould be to check if we are also running
>>>> the latest *rulesets* for spamassassin (the are providing updated
>>>> rulesets every few weeks which need to be installed using sa-
>>>> update/sa-compile). I could also provide a simple nagios plugin
>>>> for checking this ...
>>> Simple answer: yes, I believe so ... part of the docs I went
>>> through for setting up Spamassassin was to setup a cron job:
>>> 01 00 * * * /usr/local/bin/rules_du_jour
>>> which I believe(d) was supposed to do this update daily ...
>>> ... but, that said, I didn't realize there was a nagios plug in for
>>> this, but now that you mention it, I just looked at ports and see
>>> it ... let me get it installed and added to my internal monitoring,
>>> and will ping you if I have any questions about setting it up ...
>>
>> well rules_du_jour is deprecated for a while now. sa-update is by
>> default using the official SA-update channel (which is more like a
>> virus pattern update really) and can support other sources as well.
>> The Plugin I was talking about is specifically checking for new
>> available patterns not if SA is up & running btw.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Stefan
>>
>> --
>> Sent via pgsql-www mailing list (pgsql-www@postgresql.org)
>> To make changes to your subscription:
>> http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-www
>
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- -- 
Marc G. Fournier        Hub.Org Hosting Solutions S.A. (http://www.hub.org)
Email . scrappy@hub.org                              MSN . scrappy@hub.org
Yahoo . yscrappy               Skype: hub.org        ICQ . 7615664
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Re: Mailing list (lack of) spam filtering

From
"Greg Sabino Mullane"
Date:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: RIPEMD160


"Joshua D. Drake" asked:

>> I agree.  Our current situation is embarrasing.
>
> How so? It seems to me that on the embarrassing meter this is about
> -2000 in comparison to the fact that we still don't have in place
> upgrades ;)

Well, I wouldn't call it embarassing. It's not a public matter, after all,
except when people like me raise the issue on public lists like -www.
It's more of a moderation annoyance (see below).

> What is an acceptable amount of spam delivery? How does that correlate
> with acceptable amounts of false positives? Do the lists moderators get
> more spam on the lists than on the their public emails? I am an announce
> moderator and I don't get that much spam on that list.

I agree that announce does that not get much spam. I don't know the reason
for this, but it gets < 1% of what the other lists get. I certainly
see more spam in the moderation queue than on my public emails, but the
latter are heavily filtered, so I don't know if that is relevant. The
danger is that us moderators are more likely to miss a legitimate message
if it's buried in 200 other spam emails (which is roughly the current
ratio for lists like -general).


"Marc G. Fournier" wrote:

> Greg, if you would like to look over how things are setup, I have no
> qualms about that, just email me offlist and I can give you access to look
> things over and make suggestions on how we can improve the setup

Thanks, Marc, will do.

- --
Greg Sabino Mullane greg@turnstep.com
PGP Key: 0x14964AC8 200901251645
http://biglumber.com/x/web?pk=2529DF6AB8F79407E94445B4BC9B906714964AC8
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