Great, thanks!

This should help a lot,

regards, Jim

On Wed, Sep 20, 2017 at 1:29 PM, Robert Heller heller@deepsoft.com wrote:

At Wed, 20 Sep 2017 11:59:37 -0800 Jim Dory james@dorydesign.com wrote:

...

Apparently our host provider performs spam tests only on outgoing, rather than incoming - since my spamassassin blacklists don't have any effect.

So I've discovered the filters offered in Mailman after being completely buried by spammers trying to post to our subscriber only list.

I've started putting these in Sender Filters:

^[^@]+@bcira.com$ ^[^@]+@airablo.com$ ^[^@]+@bfklaw.com$ ^[^@]+@bettella.com$ ^[^@]+@areallycool.com$ ^[^@]+@aristo-tec.com$ ^[^@]+@benallgood.com$ ^[^@]+@al-meshkah.com$ ^[^@]+@atoccs.stream$ ^[^@]+@authors.com$ ^[^@]+@aulson.com$ ^[^@]+@atmyx.bid$ ^[^@]+@airtecperforms.com$

but what is the syntax for blocking domains ending in .loan .stream .trade

^[^@]+@.+.loan$ ^[^@]+@.+.stream$ ^[^@]+@.+.trade$

etc.

Just replace the "host" part with .+ (== 1 or more of any character) and replace com with loan, stream, trade, etc. Thus, for example:

^[^@]+@.+.loan$

matches any of these:

someidiot@getaloan.loan freemoney@instantloan.loan brreakyourlegs@loanshark.loan

(and many more).

...

etc, other than .com.

I've been reading up on python expressions but at first reading it is a

bit

...

overwhelming - hoping for a simple example.

I've also started adding in words under Spam filters such as:

^Subject: .*Phentermine ^Subject: .*F*buddy ^Subject: .*H00kup ^Subject: .*InstaF*ck ^Subject: .*Instacheat

Wondering if anyone would care to share their lists of filters - or a

good

...

resource?

thanks, Jim

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...

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...

-- Robert Heller -- 978-544-6933 Deepwoods Software -- Custom Software Services http://www.deepsoft.com/ -- Linux Administration Services heller@deepsoft.com -- Webhosting Services

Thanks for the reply Stephen,

I opened a trouble ticket to see if the host support had a solution to all the spam. They suggested setting the spam reject score in SpamAssassin for our VPS server at 3.5. When I had it set earlier at 5, it started marking member's posts as spam and rejected them. Didn't seem to fix when I moved that score number to 1, though that might not be a proper number to use, I don't know.

Anyway, the spam didn't really stop with that measure. No idea why.. the list's domain is the only one on that vps server. So I have resorted to using mailman settings. I have set the Sender Filters and the header filters to filter out certain subject phrases and words and to auto-discard. I get auto-discard notices of about 150 to 200 per day, but since they are stacked in just a couple notices it isn't difficult to delete. So I'm considering the problem solved unless the host complains about our traffic. Whatever I did, I haven't had a single spam get through my filters yet and no complaints from members about false positives. The spammers attacking us must not be very smart, though they are persistent.

/jim

On Thu, Sep 28, 2017 at 10:46 PM, Stephen J. Turnbull < turnbull.stephen.fw@u.tsukuba.ac.jp> wrote:

Sorry, I've been ignoring Mailman for a few days, and I guess you've got a solution that works already. This is a pair of alternatives that each have some advantages and disadvantages compared to your regexp-based solution. FWIW, YMMV

Jim Dory writes:

...

Apparently our host provider performs spam tests only on outgoing, rather than incoming - since my spamassassin blacklists don't have any effect.

Your spamassassin blacklists will have no effect on Mailman, since Mailman is not you. Ask your provider how to configure this. I strongly recommend this in preference to any measures in Mailman as it reduces the burden on the host.

...

So I've discovered the filters offered in Mailman after being completely buried by spammers trying to post to our subscriber only list.

I suppose you have cPanel, and I don't know much about their web management interface. If it's similar to vanilla Mailman, in Privacy Filters -> Sender Filters near the bottom, there is an option "generic_nonmember_action". You can set that to Discard if you're sufficiently sure that members always use their subscribed address, or are willing to have members using unsubscribed addresses to post have their posts silently discarded.

I recommend STRONGLY against using Reject, as that often results in "backscatter", which is spam to "borrowed" addresses in "From".

This measure will be effective against all of the spammers in the list below. It will not work against spammers who spoof your subscribers' addresses.

HTH

Steve

On 09/29/17 03:13, Jim Dory wrote:

The spammers attacking us must not be very smart, though they are persistent.

The truth, I think, is that *most* spammers aren't very smart. The smart ones have figured out that the real money isn't in spamming, it's in selling spamming tools and spam hosting to the ones who haven't figured that out yet.

On 03/07/2018 10:31 AM, The Mailing List Server Admin wrote:

I just added a new list where I wanted to experiment with the topics feature.  But after adding the list, the list_lists utility no longer works:

...

Traceback (most recent call last):   File "/home/mladmin/Util/MM2/list_lists", line 130, in <module>     main()   File "/home/mladmin/Util/MM2/list_lists", line 100, in main     mlist = MailList.MailList(n, lock=0)   File "/usr/local/mailman/Mailman/MailList.py", line 131, in   __init__     self.Load()   File "/usr/local/mailman/Mailman/MailList.py", line 698, in   Load     self.CheckValues()   File "/usr/local/mailman/Mailman/MailList.py", line 780, in   CheckValues     for name, pattern, desc, emptyflag in self.topics: ValueError: too many values to unpack

It is not clear what went wrong or how or why, but there is bad data in this list's topics attribute.

To "fix" the problem just move the lists/LISTNAME directory containing the config.pck and perhaps a few other files out of the lists/ directory.

However, I would be interested in knowing what's wrong and how it happened. Unfortunately, this issue probably prevents even running withlist on this list. I.e., Mailman's 'bin/withlist LISTNAME' will probably throw the same error.

You could help me however by sending me off list the lists/LISTNAME/config.pck and lists/LISTNAME/config.pck.last files, and also, if you can recall, telling what you entered in the list's topics that precipitated this.