[Mailman-Users] Spoofed Addresses

[David Relson]

On Sun, 31 Oct 2004 06:51:10 +0900
Tokio Kikuchi wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I don't use bogofilter but use spamassassin to filter incoming
> messages.
> 
> > I've learned that /var/lib/mailman/data/aliases (generated by
> > Mailman) has entries like:
> > 
> > bogofilter:        "|/usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman post bogofilter"
> > bogofilter-admin:  "|/usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman admin bogofilter"
> > 
> > my next step is to look at the mailman code that generates this, see
> > if there are options for running additional filters, etc, etc.
> 
> With this aliases setting, the incoming messages will not pass through
> procmail and bogofilter. You should either set up aliases to be
> handled by procmail or activate filter option in postfix.
> Web documents like
>   http://www.advosys.ca/papers/postfix-filtering.html
> and of course your friendly postfix manual may be helpful.

The aliases lines above are what Mailman generated for my lists.
Evidently they're not enough when filtering is needed :-<  As they are
generated by Mailman and there's a warning against modification, I've
been leaving them alone.

> Or, you can add a SpamAssassin.py like handler in Mailman/Handlers.
> (As SourceForge is currently down, so I can't give you the id but
> there is a patch in the patch tracker.)

Very possibly what my environment lacks is a Handlers file (which I
hadn't known of and will learn about).

> > By the way, being a bayesian filter, bogofilter doesn't have any
> > rules.
> 
> This, I believe is a bogofilter question. How do you set up the rules?

Bayesian filters aren't rule based (like SpamAssassin).  You train them
with message that you have classified as spam and messages you've
classified as ham.  A bayesian filter creates a wordlist (database) of
the words in the two sets of messages.  When it classifies a message, it
compares the message's words to the words in its database and then
reports how likely the message is to be spam (or ham).  If you want more
info, you can download bogofilter from sourceforge or load the version
that's included with your favorite distribution.


> > Address validation is in the realm of procmail's capabilities and,
> > at the present time, that's not being run for mailing list messages.
> 
> Address and _header_ validation as well as attachment filtering can be
> handled by Mailman. You should browse through privacy/filter options.

I shall.  As mentioned earlier I like what mailman does and I am still
learning about its features.

Thank you for steering me towards its handlers and privacy options.

Regards,

David