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With the new year comes new worries.  However, some old ones never seem to go away.  Such as it is with spam.  According to PC World, it makes up 86% of all email traffic, and it’s a constant cat and mouse game (more like a Tom and Jerry cartoon) for spam-block software developers to keep on top of it all.

Anti-spam software itself has become extremely complex and relies on learning algorithms, blocklists and other tricks, which makes it a herculean task to keep it all together and working properly.  Of course, like other complex pieces of software, it doesn’t always.

People who have setup Kerio Mailserver know about it’s ease of use and reliability.  Personally, it’s always my number one recommendation to clients, and makes up the backend for my company’s email.  And while Kerio also makes a good firewall, they have stayed away from doing spam blocking themselves; instead relying on SpamAssassin to provide that capability within Kerio Mailserver.  With the new year, however, has come an interesting bug within the SpamAssassin plugin (version 3.2.5) shipping with Kerio.  Any email sent from the year 2010 gets 3.188 points added to it’s spam score.  So, since this year happens to be the year 2010 (insert Arthur C. Clarke joke here), this is going to pose a problem.

Kerio has posted both a fix and a workaround for the issue.  The fix involves the following:

1. Edit the plugins/spamassassin/rules/72_active.cf file in KMS installation and change the following line:

original line: header FH_DATE_PAST_20XX Date =~ /20[1-9][0-9]/ [if-unset: 2006]

modified line: header FH_DATE_PAST_20XX Date =~ /20[2-9][0-9]/ [if-unset: 2006]

2. Restart the Kerio MailServer.

File paths:
- Linux: /opt/kerio/mailserver/plugins/spamassassin/rules/72_active.c f
- Mac OS X: /usr/local/kerio/mailserver/plugins/spamassassin/rules/72_ac tive.cf
Windows: c:\Program Files\Kerio\MailServer\plugins/spamassassin/rules/72_active. cf

For the slightly less adventurous among us, you can setup a custom rule specifying any email with 2010 in the header to receive a negative 3.2 on it’s spam score.  Just remember that this will have to be removed after the fix is applied to SpamAssassin, which might be tricky to verify unless you’re vigilant.  Kind of a clunky workaround, but it should be effective.

Perhaps someday our children’s children will only read of spam as a footnote in their history books (probably as a sub-note of the footnote that will be email itself), but for now it’s a daily reality.  It would be nice to think that the problem is on the verge of being solved, but then you have to wonder: did Tom ever catch Jerry?  Happy New Year!

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About Iris Professional Services
Iris Professional Services is a computer consulting company operating offices in both Seattle and Portland. Businesses throughout the Pacific Northwest rely on our expert IT consultants for all their network IT support services.