Apache News Online

18 September 2005 - Apache Spamassassin 3.1.0 Released

Apache SpamAssassin 3.1.0 has been released! SpamAssassin 3.1.0 is a major update. SpamAssassin is a mail filter which uses advanced statistical and heuristic tests to identify spam (also known as unsolicited bulk email).

Highlights of the release
-------------------------

• Apache preforking algorithm adopted; number of spamd child processes is now scaled, according to demand. This provides better VM behaviour when not under peak load.
• added PostgreSQL, MySQL 4.1+, and local SDBM file Bayes storage modules. SQL storage is now recommended for Bayes, instead of DB_File. NDBM_File support has been dropped due to a major bug in that module.
• detect legitimate SMTP AUTH submission, to avoid false positives on Dynablock-style rules.
• new plugins: DomainKeys (off by default), MIMEHeader: a new plugin to perform tests against header in internal MIME structure, ReplaceTags: plugin by Felix Bauer to support fuzzy text matching, WhiteListSubject: plugin added to support user whitelists by Subject header.
• Razor: disable Razor2 support by default per our policy, since the service is not free for non-personal use.It's trivial to reenable (by editing '/etc/mail/spamassassin/v310.pre').
• DCC: disable DCC for similar reasons, due to new license terms.
• Net::DNS bug: high load caused answer packets to be mixed up and delivered as answers to the wrong request, causing false positives.worked around.
• DNSBL lookups and other DNS operations are now more efficient, by using a custom single-socket event-based model instead of Net::DNS.

Downloading
-----------

Pick it up from:

http://SpamAssassin.apache.org/

Note, it may take up to two hours from now for that mirror to update.

md5sum:

d28bd7e83d01b234144e336bbfde0caa Mail-SpamAssassin-3.1.0.tar.bz2
f70c1fcab3d9563731bbc307eda7d69e Mail-SpamAssassin-3.1.0.tar.gz
65e9629ce255244fe3cb3d9772cdf239 Mail-SpamAssassin-3.1.0.zip

sha1sum:

0185f076f619dd9e64e94b453017f9b08d4b0f04 Mail-SpamAssassin-3.1.0.tar.bz2
d887cbae5962cb03e45aaf71cd93881a27cccc99 Mail-SpamAssassin-3.1.0.tar.gz
8b9494448782f910e573377bf226a8072f24bb3f Mail-SpamAssassin-3.1.0.zip

The release files also have a .asc accompanying them.The file serves as an external GPG signature for the given release file.The signing key is available via the wwwkeys.pgp.net key server, as well as http://spamassassin.apache.org/released/GPG-SIGNING-KEY

The key information is:

pub 1024D/265FA05B 2003-06-09 SpamAssassin Signing Key - release@spamassassin.org
Key fingerprint =3D 26C9 00A4 6DD4 0CD5 AD24 F6D7 DEE0 1987 265F A05B

Important installation notes
----------------------------

• see the INSTALL and UPGRADE files in the distribution.

Summary of major changes since 3.0.x
------------------------------------

• Apache preforking algorithm adopted; number of spamd child processes is now scaled, according to demand.This provides better VM behaviour when not under peak load.
• Inclusion of sa-update script which will allow for updates of rules and scores in between code releases.
• added PostgreSQL, MySQL 4.1+, and local SDBM file Bayes storage modules. SQL storage is now recommended for Bayes, instead of DB_File. NDBM_File support has been dropped due to a major bug in that module.
• detect legitimate SMTP AUTH submission, to avoid false positives on Dynablock-style rules.
• new Advance Fee Fraud (419 scam) rules.
• removed use of the Storable module, due to several reported hangs on SMP Linux machines.
• Converted several rule/engine components into Plugins such as: AccessDB, AWL, Pyzor, Razor2, DCC, Bayes AutoLearn Determination, etc.
• new plugins: DomainKeys (off by default), MIMEHeader: a new plugin to perform tests against header in internal MIME structure, ReplaceTags: plugin by Felix Bauer to support fuzzy text matching, WhiteListSubject: plugin added to support user whitelists by Subject header.
• TextCat language guesser moved to a plugin.(This means "ok_languages" is no longer part of the core engine by default.)
• Razor: disable Razor2 support by default per our policy, since the service is not free for non-personal use.It's trivial to reenable.
• DCC: disable DCC for similar reasons, due to new license terms.
• Net::DNS bug: high load caused answer packets to be mixed up and delivered as answers to the wrong request, causing false positives.worked around.
• DNSBL lookups and other DNS operations are now more efficient, by using a custom single-socket event-based model instead of Net::DNS.
• add support for accreditation services, including Habeas v2.
• better URI parsing -- many evasion tricks now caught.
• URIBL lookups are prioritized based on the location in the message the URI was found.
• mass-check now supports reusing realtime DNSBL hit results, and sample-based Bayes autolearning emulation, to reduce complexity.
• sa-learn, spamassassin and mass-check now have optional progress bars.
• modify header ordering for DomainKeys compatibility, by placing markup headers at the top of the message instead at the bottom of the list.
• spamd/spamc now support remote Bayes training, and reporting spam.
• spamc now supports reading its flags from a configuration file using the -F switch, contributed by John Madden.
• added SPF-based whitelisting.
• Polish rules contributed by Radoslaw Stachowiak.
• many rule changes and additions.

----

-- The Apache Spamassassin Project

----

Project Info -- Apache SpamAssassin

Apache SpamAssassin is an extensible email filter which is used to identify spam. Using its rule base, it uses a wide range of advanced heuristic and statistical analysis tests on mail headers and body text to identify "spam", also known as unsolicited bulk email. Once identified, the mail can then be optionally tagged as spam for later filtering. It provides a command line tool to perform filtering, a client-server system to filter large volumes of mail, and Mail::SpamAssassin, a set of Perl modules.

Releases can be downloaded from http://spamassassin.apache.org/downloads.html

Project Website	http://spamassassin.apache.org/
Programming Languages	Perl, C
Categories	mail
Mailing Lists	http://news.gmane.org/thread.php?group=gmane.mail.spam.spamassassin.general
Bug/Issue Tracker	http://bugzilla.spamassassin.org/
Wiki	http://wiki.apache.org/spamassassin/
Project Management Committee	Apache SpamAssassin

Access to the source code:

Browse	http://svn.apache.org/viewcvs.cgi/spamassassin/trunk/?root=Apache-SVN
SVN Direct	http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/spamassassin/trunk

Posted by Tetsuya Kitahata at September 18, 2005 05:55 AM
http://www.apachenews.org/archives/000730.html
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