Re: What is AWL?

2009-03-19 Thread Matt Kettler
Bowie Bailey wrote:
> Georgy Goshin wrote:
>   
>> What is AWL rule? Why it gives so different amount of points? How to
>> resolve this?
>> 
>
> Check out the wiki entry:
>
> http://wiki.apache.org/spamassassin/AutoWhitelist
>
>   
Agreed. Also:

http://wiki.apache.org/spamassassin/AwlWrongWay




Re: ¿Qué tiene que ver Software Lib re con educación?

2009-03-19 Thread mouss
LuKreme a écrit :
> On 18-Mar-2009, at 21:34, Jorge Cardona wrote:
>> ¿Qué tiene que ver Software Libre con educación?
> 
> 
> Esta lista es solamente ingles.
> 


it has nothing to do with "esta" nor "lista". That was spam. check the
list of recipients. just because it's talking about "libre" doesn't make
it nice.


Re: Sa-update problem

2009-03-19 Thread mouss
Bryan Lee a écrit :
> From: mouss [mailto:mo...@ml.netoyen.net] 
> Sent: Wednesday, March 18, 2009 6:30 PM
> 
>>> At question is the statement
>>> dbg: channel: current version is 752903, new version is 752903, 
>>> skipping channel
>> $ host -t txt 3.2.3.updates.spamassassin.org
> 3.2.3.updates.spamassassin.org descriptive text "752903"
>> so you have the last official update. and it's the same version for
> 3.2.5:
>> $ host -t txt 5.2.3.updates.spamassassin.org
> 5.2.3.updates.spamassassin.org descriptive text "752903"
>> last update was on 13-03-2009.
> 
> That is terrific!  Thank you for your help!
> 
> Do you know about how often these rules are updated?

yes. from time to time :)

rules are only updated when the should. there is no plan that says:
"we'll keep this update until June because we must update every three
months"


Re: interesting flash attack in spam

2009-03-19 Thread John Hardin

On Thu, 19 Mar 2009, James Wilkinson wrote:


John Hardin wrote:

No reason it shouldn't be. I'd suggest something like a rawbody match on
/]/i meta'd with HTML_MESSAGE should be worth a few (dozen)
points.


This would seem to FP on Microsoft HTML generated by certain versions of
Word. One example:

  
   
   
  
  

Re: interesting flash attack in spam

2009-03-19 Thread James Wilkinson
John Hardin wrote:
> No reason it shouldn't be. I'd suggest something like a rawbody match on  
> /]/i meta'd with HTML_MESSAGE should be worth a few (dozen)  
> points.

This would seem to FP on Microsoft HTML generated by certain versions of
Word. One example:

   


   
   

RE: SA-LEARN = RESET AWL??

2009-03-19 Thread Bowie Bailey
Cornersoyo wrote:
> If we plan to implement SA-LEARN, should we consider trying to reset
> the AWL??  Because it has been running quite awhile without any
> learning (or extra filtering) applied, so it is obviously adding
> whitelist value to things that we would rather it not...   
> 
> Or will it make the proper adjustments as we go?

AWL is completely separate from Bayes and sa-learn.  It will adjust
itself as you go.  You shouldn't need to do anything with it unless it
is completely messed up.

-- 
Bowie


Re: What is AWL?

2009-03-19 Thread Benny Pedersen

On Wed, March 18, 2009 19:07, Georgy Goshin wrote:
> I understood the spelling of AWL, but why the scores is different?
> How to tune them?

dont, its not whitelist or blacklist, what you see is that some
"faked" user try to send mail as a user you have on the mailserver,
awl tracks ips aswell so that spammer will newer succed in his try's

if you like to trust awl otherwise from trustness set another awl
factor

0.0 = i use awl but i dont trust it
1.0 = use awl and trust it 100% from what previous sender got in
spam scores

default is 0.5

perldoc Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::AWL
perldoc Mail::SpamAssassin::Conf


-- 
http://localhost/ 100% uptime and 100% mirrored :)



Re: interesting flash attack in spam

2009-03-19 Thread Dan
On Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 11:12:02PM +0100, mouss wrote:
> I don't know much people who forbid .doc/xls/ppt in email,
> and these can do a lot of harm.

:0 H
* ^Content-Type: multipart
{
 :0 B
  * name=.*\.(exe|bat|pif|com|lnk|scr|vbs|zip|pdf)(")?(\ *|\t*)$
   {
:0:
 $HOME/Mail/quarantine
  }
  }

I got that at least 5 years ago, probably more, off the procmail list
(I believe, could be be wrong). I pretty much forbid anything
microsoft related.

Over the years I added to it every time some little microsoft
exploit came along, then I finally just started to /dev/null
the stuff. Eventually I just dropped hotmail, yahoo mail, etc into
the bit bucket as well as I don't receive mail from anyone who uses
web mail anyway. I also color code the mail clients used on mail lists
and most of the time I add those who use windows mail clients to my kill
files. Add to that those who use misconfigured opensource,
multi-platform clients (and those who push out html through gmail)
and my mailbox contains only the stuff I want to read.


-- 
"The plural of anecdote is not data."
--Roger Brinner



SA-LEARN = RESET AWL??

2009-03-19 Thread Cornersoyo

If we plan to implement SA-LEARN, should we consider trying to reset the AWL??  
Because it has been running quite awhile without any learning (or extra 
filtering) applied, so it is obviously adding whitelist value to things that we 
would rather it not...
 
Or will it make the proper adjustments as we go?
 
Thanks


_
Windows Live™ Contacts: Organize your contact list. 
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Re: interesting flash attack in spam

2009-03-19 Thread hamann . w

Ned SLider said:
>> > 
>> 
>> Indeed, but why does flash need the ability to bind ports, open remote 
>> connections, download executable files and run them? It's primary 
>> function is to be a web-based multimedia player, or so I thought. 
>> SELinux provides solutions to many of these issues by reasonably 
>> restricting what things such as flash can do based on least privilege. 
>> Same argument for .doc/xls/ppt or any other file formats - why does a 
>> word processed document of spreedsheet need the ability to execute 
>> arbitrary embedded code? Unfortunately, Windows does not offer such 
>> protections and is quite happy to encourage users to run everything with 
>> unrestricted privileges based on some perceived notion of usability.
>> 
>> 
Hi,

there are uses for many of these features, in Rich Internet Apps.
Flash also is - in fact - fairly restricted as to what it may do to its 
environment (sandboxing),
so it will not create arbitrary connections.
It is, however, allowed to redirect to any webpage, like a html page could do 
(using
a meta refresh or javascript)

However, in this particular case, the flash is completely harmless and just 
displays an animation.
The bad thing is a html link to an exe file, right below the flash object 
inside the same html.
All the flash does is attracting attention ... a static jpeg image could do the 
same 
>> 

Wolfgang Hamann






Re: Do I need to adjust bayes_expiry_max_db_size?

2009-03-19 Thread Michael Scheidell



Rosenbaum, Larry M. wrote:

We are running
increasing the max DB size?

  

I would, and I would make sure I was using the mysqlbayes plugins for it.

also, the nham/ vs nspam says to me that you are learning way too much 'ham'

bump up the auto learn value (if default 12, maybe make it 18)

drop down the nham value, maybe make it 0. or -1



Thanks, Larry

Note: Here is the --dump magic output:

0.000  0  3  0  non-token data: bayes db version
0.000  07894739  0  non-token data: nspam
0.000  0   10477619  0  non-token data: nham
0.000  01428534  0  non-token data: ntokens
0.000  0 1237349612  0  non-token data: oldest atime
0.000  0 1237479369  0  non-token data: newest atime
0.000  0  0  0  non-token data: last journal sync atime
0.000  0 1237436073  0  non-token data: last expiry atime
0.000  0  86400  0  non-token data: last expire atime delta
0.000  0 732007  0  non-token data: last expire reduction 
count
  


--
Michael Scheidell, CTO
Phone: 561-999-5000, x 1259
> *| *SECNAP Network Security Corporation

   * Certified SNORT Integrator
   * 2009 Hot Company Award Finalist, World Executive Alliance
   * Five-Star Partner Program 2009, VARBusiness
   * Best Anti-Spam Product 2008, Network Products Guide
   * King of Spam Filters, SC Magazine 2008


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_

Do I need to adjust bayes_expiry_max_db_size?

2009-03-19 Thread Rosenbaum, Larry M.
We are running
SpamAssassin version 3.2.5
  running on Perl version 5.8.8
  Solaris 9 Sparc
with the MySQL Bayes store and autolearning.  We are using
bayes_expiry_max_db_size  100
Expiry is done manually once a day.  Here is a typical output from expiry:

Thu Mar 19 00:12:00 EDT 2009 Forcing Bayes expiry run
[2541] dbg: bayes: using username: root
[2541] dbg: bayes: database connection established
[2541] dbg: bayes: found bayes db version 3
[2541] dbg: bayes: Using userid: 217
[2541] dbg: bayes: bayes journal sync starting
[2541] dbg: bayes: bayes journal sync completed
[2541] dbg: bayes: expiry starting
[2541] dbg: bayes: expiry check keep size, 0.75 * max: 75
[2541] dbg: bayes: token count: 1792961, final goal reduction size: 1042961
[2541] dbg: bayes: first pass? current: 1237435937, Last: 1237349670, atime: 
86400, count: 669993, newdelta: 55502, ratio: 1.55667447271837, period: 43200
[2541] dbg: bayes: can't use estimation method for expiry, unexpected result, 
calculating optimal atime delta (first pass)
[2541] dbg: bayes: expiry max exponent: 9
[2541] dbg: bayes: atime token reduction
[2541] dbg: bayes:  ===
[2541] dbg: bayes: 43200 1144230
[2541] dbg: bayes: 86400 732048
[2541] dbg: bayes: 172800 0
[2541] dbg: bayes: 345600 0
[2541] dbg: bayes: 691200 0
[2541] dbg: bayes: 1382400 0
[2541] dbg: bayes: 2764800 0
[2541] dbg: bayes: 5529600 0
[2541] dbg: bayes: 11059200 0
[2541] dbg: bayes: 22118400 0
[2541] dbg: bayes: first pass decided on 86400 for atime delta
[2541] dbg: bayes: expiry completed
expired old bayes database entries in 172 seconds
1060954 entries kept, 732007 deleted
token frequency: 1-occurrence tokens: 53.44%
token frequency: less than 8 occurrences: 28.22%
Thu Mar 19 00:15:09 EDT 2009 Done

This is telling me that there are no tokens more than 2 days old.  Is this good 
or bad?  Should I be increasing the max DB size?

Thanks, Larry

Note: Here is the --dump magic output:

0.000  0  3  0  non-token data: bayes db version
0.000  07894739  0  non-token data: nspam
0.000  0   10477619  0  non-token data: nham
0.000  01428534  0  non-token data: ntokens
0.000  0 1237349612  0  non-token data: oldest atime
0.000  0 1237479369  0  non-token data: newest atime
0.000  0  0  0  non-token data: last journal sync atime
0.000  0 1237436073  0  non-token data: last expiry atime
0.000  0  86400  0  non-token data: last expire atime delta
0.000  0 732007  0  non-token data: last expire reduction 
count


Re: Liquid Networks

2009-03-19 Thread Michael Scheidell



John Thompson wrote:
Recently I've been seeing a lot of spam with a remotely loaded "CAN 
SPAM compliant" image disclaimer from an outfit called "Liquid Networks:"


  http://os2.dhs.org/~john/kt.jpg

The domains hosting the image vary from spam to spam.

Is there a way to make spamassassin assign a score to messages 
associated with Liquid Networks affiliates?



sure :-).  its all ones and zeros.. just got to arrange them in order.

you will need to find something 'unique' to their email, and common to 
all their email.
is the remote image always loaded from same server? then you can create 
a rule.

some common headers? create a rule.

want to use image spam with keywords? will work till they 'mung' the image.

use 'www.pastebin.com' and put up a full email, headers, warts and all, 
maybe someone will look at it.




--
Michael Scheidell, CTO
Phone: 561-999-5000, x 1259
> *| *SECNAP Network Security Corporation

   * Certified SNORT Integrator
   * 2009 Hot Company Award Finalist, World Executive Alliance
   * Five-Star Partner Program 2009, VARBusiness
   * Best Anti-Spam Product 2008, Network Products Guide
   * King of Spam Filters, SC Magazine 2008


_
This email has been scanned and certified safe by SpammerTrap(r). 
For Information please see http://www.secnap.com/products/spammertrap/

_

Liquid Networks

2009-03-19 Thread John Thompson
Recently I've been seeing a lot of spam with a remotely loaded "CAN SPAM 
compliant" image disclaimer from an outfit called "Liquid Networks:"


  http://os2.dhs.org/~john/kt.jpg

The domains hosting the image vary from spam to spam.

Is there a way to make spamassassin assign a score to messages 
associated with Liquid Networks affiliates?


--

-John Thompson (j...@os2.dhs.org)
 Appleton WI USA


Vast improvements to the invaluement.com DNSBL just completed

2009-03-19 Thread Rob McEwen
Chip M. wrote:
> This snowshoe stuff has been a PITA for a while.
> 
> *** Rob McEwen: ***
> Would you be willing to provide your /24 list, for even a short period,
> in some sort of plain text format (maybe one CIDR per line?), so those
> of us with good hand-classified corpi could try out your data?
>
> Most of my users are in a shared hosting environment, so they can't use
> your list suite as-is.  Based on what reliable people have posted, some
> of my users should probably benefit from your /24 list.  I'd be very
> glad to provide you with a list of any FPs I find. :)

When Chip posted this several weeks ago, I had to answer.. "hold on...
I'm in the middle of making large-scale improvements the invaluement
lists". But improvements are now completed. When I can finally catch my
breath, I'll have to discuss the specifics of Chip's reuqest further. In
the meantime, I'd like to formally announce the these improvements.
Basically, very substantial improvements to the invaluement.com DNSBLs
have recently been implemented. Plus, the sign-up page on the web site
is now easier to understand, and the 'blog' section of the web site has
finally started, with an initial post about these improvements to the
lists detailed here:

http://dnsbl.invaluement.com/spam-blocker/

If anyone was thinking about testing out the invaluement
lists, but kept putting it off... now is a great time to start because,
along with these recent improvements, there is also now a special deal
where *anyone who converts their free test into a subscription during
the month of March/09... will get a free month* added to their first
billing period. And *if such a subscriber chooses yearly billing, 4 free
months will be added to to their first billing period*. Unfortunately,
time is short and in order to do this, the free portion of the testing
period would be shorted a bit because the subscription would have to
start in March/09. So if this is something that interests you, I
recommend getting started as soon as possible so you'll get as many free
testing days as possible before needing to make a decision which would
take advantage of those free months. The longer you wait, the shorter
those free testing days would be if you wanted to get those free
months!

To save you a click, and keep this info on-list, here is that blog post:

**
*DETAILS ABOUT RECENT INVALUEMENT.COM IMPROVEMENTS*

The most substantial improvements were made to ivmSIP/24. So I'll cover
that last. First, I'll briefly address improvements to ivmSIP and ivmURI.

*ivmSIP IMPROVEMENTS:* During recent work on ivmSIP/24, a “bug” was
discovered in the ivmSIP portion of the engine which was causing
needless False Negatives. This had been there since the /beginning/ of
the invaluement lists! Fixing this should lead to additional ivmSIP
effectiveness. (I about fell out of my seat when I spotted the bug!) So
whatever you've thought/read/experienced about ivmSIP... it is now even
better!

*ivmURI IMPROVEMENTS:* Large improvements to the ivmURI engine were
made. For example, most good DNSBLs will employ some type of False
Positives-prevention filters which then lead to unintended False
Negatives (items that really should have been blacklisted). ivmURI is no
different and those unintended FNs produced by False
Positives-prevention filters are a fact of life. But I'm happy to report
that the ivmSIP FP-prevention filters have been greatly improved so as
to continue preventing FPs just as well as ever, but those unintended
FNs have now been greatly trimmed. This should boost ivmURI’s “catch
rates” noticeably, if not substantially.

*ivmSIP/24 IMPROVEMENTS:* This is where the vast majority of
improvements occurred. ivmSIP/24 is almost like a whole new list.

The invaluement 'engine' now has an automated system which enumerates
through all 256 possible IPs for each /24 block and individually
evaluates each IP for possible /exclusion/ from ivmSIP/24. The
improvements made are substantial because ivmSIP/24 now does NOT have
listed many subranges allocated to innocent senders in those /24 blocks
which were split between innocent senders and spammers. Yet, at the same
time, such subranges allocated to spammers remain listed on ivmSIP/24,
with many IPs /preemptively/ listed.

Additionally, we now have the ability to manually 'whitelist' individual
IPs from ivmSIP/24 without having to delist the whole block. Even
better, when that happens, the IP is NOT in our regular whitelist and,
therefore, has just as good a chance to get listed in the regular ivmSIP
list as any other IP. So this should probably be called an ivmSIP/24
“exemption list”, not a whitelist. Should that IP ever get caught
sending spam, then all bets are off and its existance on the ivmSIP/24
“exemption list” is then completely ignored. This helps prevent spammers
from lying about IPs and adding IPs to the “exemption list” where they
really just haven't yet used that IP for spamming yet.

In the past

RE: Sa-update problem

2009-03-19 Thread Bryan Lee
From: mouss [mailto:mo...@ml.netoyen.net] 
Sent: Wednesday, March 18, 2009 6:30 PM

> > At question is the statement
> > dbg: channel: current version is 752903, new version is 752903, 
> > skipping channel
>$ host -t txt 3.2.3.updates.spamassassin.org
3.2.3.updates.spamassassin.org descriptive text "752903"
> so you have the last official update. and it's the same version for
3.2.5:
> $ host -t txt 5.2.3.updates.spamassassin.org
5.2.3.updates.spamassassin.org descriptive text "752903"
> last update was on 13-03-2009.

That is terrific!  Thank you for your help!

Do you know about how often these rules are updated?


RE: What is AWL?

2009-03-19 Thread Bowie Bailey
Georgy Goshin wrote:
> 
> What is AWL rule? Why it gives so different amount of points? How to
> resolve this?

Check out the wiki entry:

http://wiki.apache.org/spamassassin/AutoWhitelist

-- 
Bowie


Re: interesting flash attack in spam

2009-03-19 Thread John Hardin

On Thu, 19 Mar 2009, LuKreme wrote:


On 19-Mar-2009, at 05:41, John Hardin wrote:

On Thu, 19 Mar 2009, LuKreme wrote:

> On 19-Mar-2009, at 04:27, John Hardin wrote:
> > No reason it shouldn't be. I'd suggest something like a rawbody match 
> > on /]/i meta'd with HTML_MESSAGE should be worth a 
> > few (dozen) points.
> 
> That seems like a good idea.  You have anything?


No, and I'd be concerned about the possibility of false positives. The 
fact that SA rules aren't context-sensitive presents a problem here. 
You can't reliably distinguish a match between an actual OBJECT tag and 
mere discussion of an OBJECT tag (e.g. with syntax examples), even if 
you meta it with HTML_MESSAGE.


If it's an html message and it includes an In an html message, a discussion would be 

Re: interesting flash attack in spam


On 19-Mar-2009, at 05:41, John Hardin wrote:

On Thu, 19 Mar 2009, LuKreme wrote:


On 19-Mar-2009, at 04:27, John Hardin wrote:
No reason it shouldn't be. I'd suggest something like a rawbody  
match on /]/i meta'd with HTML_MESSAGE should be worth  
a few (dozen) points.


That seems like a good idea.  You have anything?


No, and I'd be concerned about the possibility of false positives.  
The fact that SA rules aren't context-sensitive presents a problem  
here. You can't reliably distinguish a match between an actual  
OBJECT tag and mere discussion of an OBJECT tag (e.g. with syntax  
examples), even if you meta it with HTML_MESSAGE.


If it's an html message and it includes an suspicious.  In an html message, a discussion would be 

Re: interesting flash attack in spam


On Thu, 19 Mar 2009, LuKreme wrote:


On 19-Mar-2009, at 04:27, John Hardin wrote:
No reason it shouldn't be. I'd suggest something like a rawbody match 
on /]/i meta'd with HTML_MESSAGE should be worth a few 
(dozen) points.


That seems like a good idea.  You have anything?


No, and I'd be concerned about the possibility of false positives. The 
fact that SA rules aren't context-sensitive presents a problem here. You 
can't reliably distinguish a match between an actual OBJECT tag and mere 
discussion of an OBJECT tag (e.g. with syntax examples), even if you meta 
it with HTML_MESSAGE.


Hence my subsequent suggestion for an HTML tag scoring plugin. That 
_would_ be context-sensitive and I'd feel safe giving an OBJECT tag 20 
points that way.


Another alternative would be a way to mark a rule so that it only applies 
to body parts of a given MIME type, so the rule above could only be run 
against the text/html body parts.


--
 John Hardin KA7OHZhttp://www.impsec.org/~jhardin/
 jhar...@impsec.orgFALaholic #11174 pgpk -a jhar...@impsec.org
 key: 0xB8732E79 -- 2D8C 34F4 6411 F507 136C  AF76 D822 E6E6 B873 2E79


Re: turn off bayes?

On Wed, 2009-03-18 at 21:40 +0100, Mark Martinec wrote:
> Dan,
> 
> > I normally disable bayes, because without proper training it tends
> to make
> > spamassassin less reliable.  But I've got one installation that is
> > stubbornly running bayes even though I have disabled it.
> >
> > I set use_bayes 0 in /etc/mail/spamassassin/local.cf
> > I set use_bayes 0 in ~/.spamassassin/user_prefs of the user running
> > amavisd-new I can't find any other places I can disable it.
> 
> That should suffice, unless you have other .cf files there
> where it might be enabled.
> 
> > I have verified that all these are set and restarted amavisd-new,
> but I
> > still get bayes_00=-2.599
> 
> Check what files SpamAssassin sees during startup:
>   amavisd debug-sa

Fascinating.  Although the user that runs the daemon is the clamav user,
it is still looking for user_prefs
in /var/lib/amavis/.spamassassin/user_prefs.  Since that directory is
not even mentioned in the passwd file, I'm somewhat amazed

But we'll see if that kills off bayes



-- 
Daniel J McDonald, CCIE #2495, CISSP #78281, CNX
Austin Energy
http://www.austinenergy.com



signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part


Re: interesting flash attack in spam


On 19-Mar-2009, at 04:27, John Hardin wrote:
No reason it shouldn't be. I'd suggest something like a rawbody  
match on /]/i meta'd with HTML_MESSAGE should be worth a  
few (dozen) points.



That seems like a good idea.  You have anything?

--
Happy Jack wasn't tall, but he was a man



Re: SpamAssassins bayes mechanism and message headers

>From: Matt Kettler 
>Date: Tue, 17 Mar 2009 21:30:02 -0400
>
>fl...@pbartels.info wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> instead of disabling a lot possibly set message headers using
>> "bayes_ignore_header" and ending up in strange configs like:
>>
>> bayes_ignore_header Return-Path
>...
>> (found on the net)
>Where?
>>
>> shouldn't SpamAssassins bayes mechanism just ignore the complete
>> message header and just look at the body?
>> This seems useful in my opinion.
>It seems like a very misguided idea to me.
>
>Is there any reason to think headers make bad tokens?
>Do you have any test data showing this improves your bayes accuracy?

On 18.03.09 15:23, Jeff Mincy wrote:
> Yes - I think some headers make extremely bad tokens for bayes, for
> example the X-Mailer/User-Agent headers.   40% of the spam I get
> claims to  have Microsoft Outlook as a x-Mailer.   So bayes rapidly
> determines that *UAMicrosoft (etc) is an extremely strong token.
> These *UA tokens were enough to push a short ham message to BAYES_99.
> When I added an bayes_ignore_header the score dropped to ~BAYES_40
> Obfuscated words like 'st0ck' are 100% indications of spam (or of
> messages that discuss spam), so these words work great for bayes.
> A 'X-Mailer: Microsoft Office Outlook' header doesn't really tell you
> anything about the message, at least not to the extent that bayes
> treats these tokens.

Better train such mail properly. Those tokens will get score of 0.5 which
may exclude them from decisions. And you can never know, which Outlook
version is spammy and which is hammy. Maybe one day you'll find that there
si version of Outlook no spammers use and other version only spammers use.

> The Message-ID tokens are also low quality tokens.  Most of these
> tokens are hapaxes that are never used by other messages.  These just
> fill up the bayes database.  Maybe if the Message-ID tokens were even
> more processed then maybe these could be more useful for bayes - eg -
> replace 1234.56789 with a format %4d.%5d, or throw out all of the
> timestamp numbers and keep the just the stuff after the @.

Funny, there are some Message-Id rules (I counted 7) that catch some spam.
Yes, good Message-Id parser for bayes could catch them better than the
current one. But by disabling Message-Id you will loose that all.


-- 
Matus UHLAR - fantomas, uh...@fantomas.sk ; http://www.fantomas.sk/
Warning: I wish NOT to receive e-mail advertising to this address.
Varovanie: na tuto adresu chcem NEDOSTAVAT akukolvek reklamnu postu.
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Re: interesting flash attack in spam


Le 19/03/2009 11:27, John Hardin a écrit :

No reason it shouldn't be. I'd suggest something like a rawbody match on
/]/i meta'd with HTML_MESSAGE should be worth a few (dozen)
points.


FWIW, MailScanner has had the option of disarming  and 
 tags for ages.


John.

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Re: interesting flash attack in spam


mouss wrote:

RobertH a écrit :
 


http://pastebin.com/m2fcbe7b5

Thanks for posting the sample.


My email sanitizer successfuly defends against this attack.


:)

--
  John Hardin  

no disrespect intended yet i would like to understand...

u, if your "email sanitizer" caught it, why isnt that something
programmed "in another way" inside SA, or clamav, etc...?

i mean we have viruses, we have spyware, we have spam, we have UCE, we have
all these different terms that describe the essentially the same stuff...

cant this be dealt with in something that already exists like SA, Clamav, or
whateverm besides having another custom piece of coding ?

i mean, John, at the very least get out some them there GUNS and shoot it a
bunch and make it stop or something!






The answer probably lies in a layered defence. If you can detect the 
message as spam in SA regardless of malicious content, then that's just 
one option. In an ideal world AV programs should detect the trojan but 
the simple reality is that AV vendors can not keep up with the current 
bombardment of malware. This sample had very poor detection at the time 
the email was circulated. That may have improved somewhat now, but now 
is too late for those who would have been hit by this at the time it was 
sent.



spam contains a URL (the fact that it is flash is only half-relevant).
That URL redirects to an exe file. you want tod do what?

The approach that consists of getting the spam filter (SA here) access
the URL has a lot of problems (easy DoS, address confirmation, higher
latency, ... etc)

Fixing the MUA may be good, but this still means that a file suffix is
meaningful. however, the internet isn't windows. a ".exe" does nothing
on a unix/linux system (assuming no windows support, be that wine or
other).

and to answer Ned's post, the problem isn't with flash running arbitrary
programs (what's the alternative? display ascii text only?). The problem
is elsewhere. I don't know much people who forbid .doc/xls/ppt in email,
and these can do a lot of harm.



Indeed, but why does flash need the ability to bind ports, open remote 
connections, download executable files and run them? It's primary 
function is to be a web-based multimedia player, or so I thought. 
SELinux provides solutions to many of these issues by reasonably 
restricting what things such as flash can do based on least privilege. 
Same argument for .doc/xls/ppt or any other file formats - why does a 
word processed document of spreedsheet need the ability to execute 
arbitrary embedded code? Unfortunately, Windows does not offer such 
protections and is quite happy to encourage users to run everything with 
unrestricted privileges based on some perceived notion of usability.







RE: interesting flash attack in spam


On Wed, 18 Mar 2009, RobertH wrote:



My email sanitizer successfuly defends against this attack.



no disrespect intended yet i would like to understand...

u, if your "email sanitizer" caught it, why isnt that something
programmed "in another way" inside SA, or clamav, etc...?


No reason it shouldn't be. I'd suggest something like a rawbody match on 
/]/i meta'd with HTML_MESSAGE should be worth a few (dozen) 
points.


Perhaps more generic: a plugin that would parse out the distinct tags in 
an HTML body part, and assign points based on whether a given tag appeared 
at all (e.g. "score_html_tag object 20") or whether a tag does not appear 
in a "tag whitelist" (to catch the random tagname 
obfuscation method).


i mean we have viruses, we have spyware, we have spam, we have UCE, we 
have all these different terms that describe the essentially the same 
stuff...


cant this be dealt with in something that already exists like SA, 
Clamav, or whateverm besides having another custom piece of coding ?


Should SpamAssassin really be recast as EmailMalwareAssassin? I personally 
don't think so.


All of these tools take different approaches to overlapping problem sets. 
My sanitizer complements SA and clamav. I was just lightheartedly tooting 
my own horn a bit, primarily because reactive security is inherently 
limited.


i mean, John, at the very least get out some them there GUNS and shoot 
it a bunch and make it stop or something!


;-)


:) I'll let the Russian Mafia whack the spammers.

--
 John Hardin KA7OHZhttp://www.impsec.org/~jhardin/
 jhar...@impsec.orgFALaholic #11174 pgpk -a jhar...@impsec.org
 key: 0xB8732E79 -- 2D8C 34F4 6411 F507 136C  AF76 D822 E6E6 B873 2E79
---
  The question of whether people should be allowed to harm themselves
  is simple. They *must*.   -- Charles Murray


Re: JoeJobbed - Vbounce plugin - SPF?.

> On 17.03.09 14:02, Michael Hutchinson wrote:
> >> We initially tried 'riding out the storm' as it were, but were unable
> >> to keep on top of the load put on the servers by excessive E-Mail
> >> messages requiring scanning by SA. This got so bad that the mailserver
> >> had become unresponsive to our clients.
> 
> > qmail is known for bouncing, instead of rejecting unknown recipients
> > at SMTP leve. You filter unknown
> > recipients? If not, this is your problem.

On 19.03.09 09:54, Michael Hutchinson wrote:
> If an smtproutes entry forces me to accept unknown recipients for said
> affected domain, then Yes, and I would assume that this is the
> behaviour.

Oh, yes, smtproutes is a problem. Not good until we'll all have some clean
way how to detect valid and invalid customers.

> >> I was considering convincing the powers to let me setup SPF, but their
> >> requirement would be to have both v1 and v2 spf tags - and I'm not sure
> >> whether Q-Mail is up to both yet, but some kind of SPF implementation
> >> where we check the tags (not necessarily publish them)
> 
> >> but I guess that's an MTA question:)
> 
> >forget SPF v2. Use v1 but don't expect huge results, there's still many
> >SMTP servers not checking the SPF...
> 
> OK, What's wrong with SPF v2 ?

I think we should better google for it, but iirc SPF v2 is based on Microsoft's
idea that has some logical and some patent issues.

Does anyone here know more/better about SPF v2?
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Re: interesting flash attack in spam


> http://pastebin.com/m2fcbe7b5

Thanks for the sample.. I added detection for the email and exe file
yesterday.

Cheers,

Steve
Sanesecurity
www.sanesecurity.com
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