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Migration and Spam
Filtering
To provide enhanced
mail and program service for all of CCIL community, the IT
department and LinuxForce started server upgrades in November
and December 2006. By upgrades we mean software migration moving the
software that runs various functions, program by program, from
old equipment to new.
Since the software migration now isn’t going to be finished
until the end of January and SPAM is/was such a problem a
stopgap measure was devised. Incoming emails are now
temporarily redirected to pass through the new server
named Earth before going back
to the Mercury server. Some level of spam filtering has always
been done on the old server named Mercury. Earth is more powerful and able to run more powerful
SPAM filters.
On a typical day last
year the old method identified & rejected about 50% of the
email volume, or 8000 to 9000 emails, as SPAM. On a recent day
the new method identified & rejected almost 20,000
(19398) spam/virus laden mails, which is about 86% of all our
incoming email traffic. So
we are killing about 36% more spam with the addition of Earth.
Scanning of spam/virus mails runs through about 12 processes
on Earth. Each process can recognize a known attack parameter
and when found is discarded. A parameter can be a false domain
name, content scanning for known words, a blacklisted IP
address, invalid sender, badly written spam bots, invalid
sender or recipients, MIME errors, long file names, or known
extension and file types from spam/virus attacks. The new
server configuration is able to scan html code and script
files in any browser; attachments and dummy viruses; java and
java script; vb script; activex; cookies; and open proxy
checks and port scans to name a few. Like your PC, there are
always updates of software and hardware to keep up with the
attacks.
We were getting messages with unrecognized words because the
messages seem to be of Russian origin. Contacting a Russia
citizen proved to be not Russian, but some other country in
the Mediterranean part of the world. But since the upgrade,
these messages have disappeared.
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