Integrating MailScanner, SpamAssasin and Exchange

[Walter D. Wyndroski]

Why not use a challenge-response system in conjuction with MailScanner and
SpamAssassin on the Linux/Unix box? That's what I am doing for my
organization. Visit www.tmda.net for more details on that package.

The way I am doing it (or will be, my development machine broke just as I
had only one block of code to write). I am writing my own custom front-end,
however tmda comes with a really great front-end. It's more functional than
mine, but I REALLY needed simplicity for my users. The cgi which comes with
tmda is very powerful.

Anway, I have my Linux box set as secondary MX and my Exchange server as
primary MX. Both are behind the firewall. I have primary MX inaccessible to
Internet, that way all mail falls to the secondary MX. Mail comes into
MailScanner (gets all its normal filtering done) then goes to procmail which
actually forces all the mail to be sent to the tmda handler. In each user's
tmda config, I have final delivery option set to forward to the
user at exchange . The primary MX is accessible to the Linux box since both are
behind the firewall. My mx records are mail1.domain.com and mail2.domain.com
(mail1 is acutally and alias to pony.domain.com (the Exchange server) - hey
it was called that before I got there ;) ). So then I can get subdomain
specific in the tmda config and set the delivery for each user to be a
forward to user at pony.domain.com. Now users can simply hit a web cgi to
manage their pending emails and release them if they wish. With this method,
virtually 100% of spam is blocked without having to worry about the scoring
systems because each user will maintain his/her own whitelists and
blacklists. Not to mention when tmda sends a confirmation to the sender, the
sender can simply click a link in that email to release his/her email and
become auto-whitelisted henceforth.

Of course, this system does place some burden on the users, but only
intially. I'm acutally writing some perl cgi's to make management easier
since my users will not have a choice in this matter as it is a mandate from
 the top that everyone have it.

I hope this helps and is not too confusing.

Walt Wyndroski


----- Original Message -----
From: "Greg Boehnlein" <damin at NACS.NET>
To: <MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK>
Sent: Tuesday, October 21, 2003 9:01 PM
Subject: Integrating MailScanner, SpamAssasin and Exchange


> Hello,
>         We have been using the combination of Mailscanner and SpamAssasin
> for quite a while now with great success. What a great set of tools! I've
> contributed what I can over the years, however minor that may be, but I am
> always quick to point out Mailscanner as an example of an extremely well
> built and flexible open source project. It solves many of the problems
> that the so called "Enterprise MTAs" can't effectively solve on their own!
> ;)
>         Recently, I have been asked by a client to try and intergrate a
> MailScanner + SpamAssasin front end with a Microsoft Exchange server
> backend. The client wants mail passing through the MS+SA server to be
> tagged with a header (simple) that identifies possible spam and then
> having the Exchange server review that header and dump the mail to a Spam
> folder for later review.
>         This is pitifully easy to do with procmail, by looking at the
> Spam-Score header, but for all of the documentation I can find on
> Exchange, I can find absolutely no method for doing this. Has anyone done
> this on Exchange, or is there some other obvious way to make Exchange
> throw out mail that is tainted?
>
>
> --
>     Vice President of N2Net, a New Age Consulting Service, Inc. Company
>          http://www.n2net.net Where everything clicks into place!
>                              KP-216-121-ST
>
>
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