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Now that SpamAssassin is installed, we need to configure the system to use it. SpamAssassin can be used in many ways. It can be integrated into the MTA for maximum performance; it can run as a daemon or a simple script to avoid complexity; it can use separate settings for each user or use a single set of settings for all users; and it can be used for all accounts or just for the chosen ones. In this article, we will discuss using SpamAssassin in three ways.

The first method is with Procmail. This is the simplest method to configure and is suitable for low-volume sites, for example, less than 10,000 e-mails a day.

The second method is to use SpamAssassin as a daemon. This is more efficient, and can still be used with Procmail, if desired.

The third method is to integrate SpamAssassin with a content filter such as amavisd. This offers performance advantages, but occasionally the content filter does not work with the latest release of SpamAssassin. Problems, if any, are usually resolved quickly.

To help you get the most out of SpamAssassin, Packt Publishing has published SpamAssassin: A practical guide to integration and configuration, (ISBN 1-904811-12-4) by Alistair McDonald.

Using SpamAssassin with Procmail

Before we configure the system to use SpamAssassin, let’s consider what SpamAssassin does. SpamAssassin is not an e-mail filter. A filter is something that changes the destination of an e-mail. SpamAssassin adds e-mail headers to an e-mail message to indicate if it is spam or not.

Consider an e-mail with headers like this:

Return-Path: <[email protected]>
X-Original-To: jdoe@localhost
Delivered-To: [email protected]
Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1])
by domain.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 52A2CF2948
for <jdoe@localhost>; Thu, 11 Nov 2004 03:39:42 +0000 (GMT)
Received: from pop.ntlworld.com [62.253.162.50]
by localhost with POP3 (fetchmail-6.2.5)
for jdoe@localhost (single-drop); Thu, 11 Nov 2004 03:39:42 +0000
(GMT)
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: Wed, 10 Nov 2004 17:54:14 -0800
From: "stephen mellors" <[email protected]>
User-Agent: MIME-tools 5.503 (Entity 5.501)
X-Accept-Language: en-us
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: "Jane Doe" <[email protected]>
Subject: nearest pharmacy online
Content-Type: text/plain;
charset="us-ascii"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

SpamAssassin will add header lines.

X-Spam-Flag: YES
X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.1.0-r54722 (2004-10-13) on
host.domain.com
X-Spam-Level: *****
X-Spam-Status: Yes, score=5.8 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_05,HTML_00_10,
HTML_MESSAGE,MPART_ALT_DIFF autolearn=no
version=3.1.0-r54722

SpamAssassin doesn’t change the destination of the e-mail, all it does is add headers that enable something else to change the destination of the e-mail.

The best indication that an e-mail is spam is the X-Spam-Flag. If this is YES, SpamAssassin considers the mail to be spam and it can be filtered by Procmail.

SpamAssassin also assigns a score to each e-mail—the higher the score, the more likely that the e-mail is spam. The threshold that determines if an e-mail is spam can be configured on a system-wide or per-user basis. The default of 5.0 is a sensible default if you are using an unmodified installation of SpamAssassin without any custom rulesets.

Global procmailrc file

Let’s suppose that we want to check all incoming e-mail for spam using SpamAssassin. Commands in the /etc/procmailrc file are run for all users, so executing SpamAssassin here is ideal.

The following simple recipe will run SpamAssassin for all users when placed in /etc/procmailrc:

:0fw
| /usr/bin/spamassassin

To place all spam in an individual spam folder, ensure that the global/etc/procmailrc file has a line specifying a default destination. For example:

DEFAULT=$HOME/.maildir/

If not, then add a line specifying DEFAULT. To filter spam into a folder, add a recipe similar to the following:

* ^X-Spam-Flag: Yes
.SPAM/new

This assumes that each user has a folder called SPAM already configured.

To place all the spam in a single, central folder, use an absolute path to the destination in the recipe:

* ^X-Spam-Flag: Yes
/var/spool/poss_spam

This will place all spam in a single folder, which can be reviewed by the system administrator. As times, regular e-mail may occasionally be wrongly detected as spam, the folder should not be world-readable, which leads to a more generalized statement.

SpamAssassin will be run under the system account used by Postfix. This means that the Bayesian database and the auto-whitelists and blacklists will be shared by all users. From a security point of view, it’s important that the various databases that SpamAssassin creates are not world-writable.

SpamAssassin stores user-specific files in the ~/.spamassassin/ directory. Here is a list of fi les that may be present for a user:

//===INSERT TABLE 01===

Some of them may contain confidential data—for example, regular contacts will appear in the auto-whitelist files. Careful use of permissions will ensure that the files are not readable by regular user accounts.

Using SpamAssassin on a per-user basis

Perhaps some users don’t receive spam, or there may be issues with users sharing whitelists and Bayesian databases. SpamAssassin can be run on an individual basis by moving the recipes to the ~/.procmailrc of specific users. This should increase the filtering performance for each user, but increases disk space usage for each user and requires setting up each individual user account by modifying its ~/.procmailrc.

A typical user’s .procmailrc might look like this:

MAILDIR=$HOME/.maildir
:0fw
| /usr/bin/spamassassin
:0
* ^X-Spam-Flag: Yes
.SPAM/cur

As suggested, e-mail may sometimes be wrongly detected as spam. It’s worthwhile reviewing spam to ensure that legitimate e-mails have not been wrongly classified. If the user receives a lot of spam, then wading through it all is time consuming, tedious, and error prone. Procmail can filter spam by checking the spam score written in the e-mail headers by SpamAssassin.

The low-scoring spam (for example, scoring up to 9) can be placed in one folder called Probable_Spam, while higher scoring e-mails (which are more likely to be spam) can be placed a folder called Certain_Spam.

To do this, we use the X-Spam-Level header, which SpamAssassin creates. This is simply the number of asterisks, related to the X-Spam-Level value. By moving e-mail with more than a certain number of asterisks to the Certain_Spam folder, the remaining spam is “Probable Spam”. E-mail that is marked with X-Spam-Flag: NO, is obviously not spam.

The following .procmailrc file will filter high scoring spam separately from low scoring spam and non spam:

MAILDIR=$HOME/.maildir
:0fw
| /usr/bin/spamassassin
:0
* ^X-Spam-Level: **************
.Certain_Spam/cur
:0
* ^X-Spam-FLAG: YES
.Probable_Spam/cur

Using SpamAssassin as a daemon with Postfix

A daemon is a background process; one that waits for work, processes it, and then waits for more work. Using this approach actually improves performance (as long as there is sufficient memory) because responsiveness is improved—the program is always ready and waiting and does not have to be loaded each time spam tagging is required.

To use SpamAssassin as a daemon, a user account should be added—it’s dangerous to run any service as root. As root, enter the following commands to make a user and a group called spam:

# groupadd spam
# useradd -m -d /home/spam -g spam -s /bin/false spam
# chmod 0700 /home/spam

To configure Postfix to run SpamAssassin, use SpamAssassin as a daemon. The Postfix master.cf file must be changed. Edit the file and locate the line that begins with ‘smtp inet’. Amend the line to add -o content_filter=spamd to the end.

smtp inet n - n - - smtpd -o content_
filter=spamd

Add the following lines to the end of the file:

spamd unix - n n - - pipe
flags=R user=spam argv=/usr/bin/spamc
-e /usr/sbin/sendmail -oi -f ${sender} ${recipient}

If the text is spread across several lines, any continuing line must begin with spaces as shown. The changes to the file define a filter called spamd that runs the spamc client for each message and also specifies that the filter should be run whenever an e-mail is received via SMTP.

On this line, spamd is the name of the filter and matches the name used in the content_filter line. The user= portion specifies the user context that should be used to run the command. The argv= portion describes the program that should be run. The other flags are used by Procmail and their presence is important.

Using SpamAssassin with amavisd-new

amavisd-new is an interface between MTAs and content checkers. Despite its name, amavisd-new is a well-established open source package that is well maintained. Content checkers scan e-mail for viruses and/or spam. amavisd-new is slightly different. Just like like spamd, it is written in Perl and runs as a daemon, but instead of accessing SpamAssassin via the spamc or spamassassin clients, it loads SpamAssassin into memory and accesses the SpamAssassin functions directly. It is therefore closely coupled to SpamAssassin and may need to be upgraded at the same time as SpamAssassin.

Unlike other Perl-based applications and utilities, amavisd-new is not available from CPAN. However, it is available in source form and RPM form for many distributions of Linux, and is also available for debian-based repositories. Details of versions available are listed on http://www.ijs.si/software/amavisd/#download. We recommend that if the version of SpamAssassin that your distributor offers is up-to-date, then you should use their package of both SpamAssassin and amavisd.

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