How Lotus Domino 8 should handle spam, just a suggestion.

Lotus Domino 8 is in the horizon, soon it will come. I do hope that IBM give more attention about how Lotus Domino 8 handle spam.

This is what my suggestion about how Lotus Domino 8 should handle spam and this is my personal opinion only.

Right now Lotus Domino have two tasks to receives and delivers emails to the users, SMTP task and Router task. I think that IBM can add another task for spam filter, just between the SMTP task and the router task.

Current flow:
SMTP task --> Router task

Suggestion flow:
SMTP task --> Spam Filter task --> Router task

This is the flow.

SMTP Task

This task function just like sendmail, but in domino it only for receive emails that sent through SMTP protocols. For sending emails to SMTP protocols domino use the router task. Since domino 7, domino already have significant tools to handle spam like DNSBL, whitelist and blacklist. Even there is no milter, greylist, or GreetPause, but I think SMTP task is enough.
In SMTP task we can reject or tagged emails that listed in DNSBL. If we choose to tagged emails, then when emails delivered to spam filter task, spam filter will give it a score and the score should be high enough.

Spam Filter task (New)
This is where the spam filter really works. It should have many modules to filter spam. Anti virus software can create their modules and then add the module in this task. We also can create our own custom module and then add it to this task.

Spamassassin (like) module
This new task should be using the scoring system like Spamassassin. Spamassassin is doing well in scoring emails. Spamassassin having many rules and each rules will add a score to the total score, then the total score will be use to detemined if the email is spam or ham (not spam). We can set the minimum score for low spam, and the minimum score for high spam. At the end, this task will added new headers to the mail header for final processing in server rules and mail rules.

This sample how Spamassassin scoring works.

The total score is 7.86.
If we set the minimum score for spam is 4, than this email will be tagged as spam.

I do know that there is a project in openntf to integrate Spamassassin in domino

http://www.openntf.org/Projects/pmt.nsf/ProjectLookup/SpamAssassin%20Integration
, so I know this is possible.

Bayes module
Well IBM already promising bayes in domino 8, so I don't think this is a problem. Another suggestion that domino should provide mail in database for spam and ham, so users can sent emails to designation database. Then the bayes will learn form that databases.

DCC, Razor and Pyzor modules
These three tools perform very well in Spamassassin, so I think domino
should also use this tools.

Another DNSBL?
Just to add more score?

Router task
Server rules will than process the header from spam filter task, and do
some action for the emails marked as spam (or ham). I think the best rules
is for high scoring spam should be deleted, and for low scoring spam should
be delivered to the junk folder.

Well, I think I try to recreate MailScanner for domino. But MailScanner is
a very good software, so there is no reason why IBM not using the same
technique like MailScanner in Lotus Domino 8.

Steps to stop SPAM

There is a good article about steps that we can use to prevent spam, you
can find the very good article in here
http://www.spamhaus.org/effective_filtering.html.

Personally, I use spamhaus as my primary DNSBL. It never let me down. Off
course there are some legitimate emails that being block by spamhaus, very
few, and that's not my problem. :).
I believe email administrators and ISP admin must protect they servers and
their network from spammers.

These is my configuration to stop spam:

1. DNSBL test in mta level.
I use sendmail as my mta server, and activated DNSBL in sendmail. Why put
DNSBL in mta level? Because it can stop a lot of spam before it transferred
to our mail server. But because it will stop few legitimate emails, I try
to put 'not so aggressive' DNSBL like sbl from spamhaus (actually I use
sbl-xbl.spamhaus.org).

2. Greetpause
Great new feature from sendmail. This way all emails (except if we put some
conditional) will be forced to wait for HELO or EHLO command from the mta
server. If the email doesn't bother to wait for HELO or EHLO command, the
we don't bother to receive, we simply kick it.

3. Mailscanner
Great software. Nothing more to say. You can download the latest version in http://www.mailscanner.info. In Mailscanner I activate these
features:

3.1. Spamassassin
A must. In new version of spamassassin there a script called sa-update to update builtin spamassassin rules, you can use cron job to make it run automatically every day.
You can add additional rules for spamassassin, most of them are in http://www.rulesemporium.org, additional rules can be automatically updated with smart cron job called rules_du_jour.

3.1.1. DCC + Razor
Inside the Spamassassin, I turn on both DCC and Razor. Increase the spam
score enough to make it a spam.

3.1.2. Bayes
Help a lot to stop more spam. I create two mail box, one for spam and one
for ham (non spam). Each day, a cron job will learn from each mail box, and
learn it as spam or ham.

3.2. Clamav (for check viruses)
Every mail server need antivirus. Clamav is the best there is, and free.

3.3. Another DNSBL test (to increase score)
This DNSBL actually will increase the spam score.

That's are my configurations. Hope that will help you to create your own
configuration for battle against spam.

About MailScanner

One word about MailScanner, great.
It a tools that, well almost eliminate all your emails problem. Virus, and spam email will be eliminated. Not 100% though, but hey, nothing can.
MailScanner it a perl script that rely on other tools and software to eliminate virus and spam. It heavily rely on Spamassassin to check if the email is spam or not. For viruses, it can detect and use multiple anti virus installed, for example you can use clamav and f-prot for the same time.

MailScanner have many rules to simplify it setting. It have whitelist, blacklist, file name rules, file type rules and many others. For rbl, we can put it in mta level or in MailScanner. For example, we can put a safe rbl (which almost ONLY block spam) in mta level, and we put more agressive rbl in mailscanner. Very flexible.

You can configure MailScanner in most known mta server, like sendmail, postfix and exim. It very easy to install, my first try take me about 2 hours. And the server is up and running.
With the default configuration, it more than enough. to handle spam, but you tweak it if you like. The configuration is self explain, very easy to understand.

Conclusion.
MailScanner it a very usefull software. If you are a mail administrator, its a must. The features is more powerfull than most paid software.

I will write more about mailscanner, very interesting software.
You can learn more about mailscanner at http://www.mailscanner.info