## A Free Anti-Virus and Anti-Spam Filter Protecting over 1 billion e-mails every day, for tens of millions of users ## Over 500,000 downloads ### Version 4.50 1st February 2006 ## Contents E-Mail "Phishing" Fraud! Was your mail rejected by MailScanner? News On-line stores - new products from Germany! MailScanner Users' Comments and Testimonials Guest Book A few MailScanner users Downloads Documentation Support Deploying MailScanner with Microsoft Exchange Server (or any other unsupported mail server) E-Mail the team Please donate or buy the book Poetry | ## Buy the book! Updated August 2005 MailScanner thanks transtec Computers for their support

## News

1/2/2006 | Released stable version 4.50. This version is considerably faster than previous versions, it is definitely worth upgrading to this release. It has been a very busy month, and there are over 35 new additions, improvements and extra features. To get a default sendmail setup, no modifications are required to MailScanner.conf as the list of virus scanners is now auto-detected, among other things. There are now a whole load of command-line options, you can get the list with "`MailScanner --help`". I nearly made this version 5. For a full list of everything new, please read the Change Log.
23/1/2006 | One of our students has found the perfect use for an old Sun Ultra-5.
22/1/2006 | MailScanner has gone to zero-configuration required. The next release will require no changes to MailScanner.conf at all to get you started. Download and install MailScanner. Download and install my easy installation package for ClamAV+SA (which is on the downloads page) if you want to use ClamAV and SpamAssassin (whivh I advise, but you don't have to do it). Then just start MailScanner. It will use SpamAssassin if it is installed, but doesn't insist on it. It will search for any installed virus scanners and then use all the scanners it finds. It requires no changes at all to get you started.
18/1/2006 | Released beta 4.50.9. Added a uu-decoder to assist virus scanners that do not have their own internal one. This also allows for filename and filetype checking of files stored within uu-encoded files which have been sent as attachments to a message.
15/1/2006 | Released beta 4.50.8. Speed timings are now done to microsecond accuracy, and the total time taken to process a batch is printed at the end of each batch.
14/1/2006 | Released beta 4.50.7. The SpamAssassin results cache is now working very nicely and tidily. It often produces a 30% - 40% hit rate which speeds up MailScanner considerably. I have also added a "--lint" command-line switch which will verify the configuration of MailScanner and SpamAssassin. Optionally follow "--lint" with the location of the MailScanner.conf file you want it to check. "--help" implemented, and there is now a ruleset-checker as well.
4/1/2006 | Released beta 4.50.4. More speed improvements by relying on the fact that many spammers send exactly the same message many times over. Note that a couple of new Perl modules are required, so please run the ./install.sh script to install or upgrade to this version.
1/1/2006 | Released stable 4.49.7. Major speed improvements for sendmail, Postfix and Exim systems. Various other new features to make filename and filetype traps easier to implement, easy monitoring of activity by changing "ps" output during message processing, among other things. See the Change Log for the gory details.
1/1/2006 | New Year's Eve office party last night, most enjoyable affair. Unedited photos are here!
29/12/2005 | Released beta 4.49.5. Speedups for Postfix implemented. See the Change Log for more info.
20/12/2005 | Released beta 4.49.4. Speedups for Exim implemented. See the Change Log for more info.
19/12/2005 | Released beta 4.49.3. I hope that this has major speed improvements for sendmail. There are also 4 new configuration options for the benefit of web-based user interfaces for MailScanner, saving them having to implement a filename.rules.conf editor and a filetype.rules.conf editor in most situations. See the Change Log for more info.
17/12/2005 | Released beta 4.49.2. I hope that this has major speed improvements for sendmail. If I get a good response to this, I will implement the speed-up for Exim and ZMailer as well. There are also 4 new configuration options for the benefit of web-based user interfaces for MailScanner, saving them having to implement a filename.rules.conf editor and a filetype.rules.conf editor in most situations. See the Change Log for more info.
16/12/2005 | A very curious bug has been found in perl which can be exploited if an application blindly accepts print "format" strings from users without checking them properly. There is absolutely no way that MailScanner could ever be convinced to do this, and it is not vulnerable to this bug.
9/12/2005 | Released beta 4.49.1. The main new feature is that the output listed by "ps" should show what MailScanner is doing. See the Change Log for more info.
1/12/2005 | Released stable version 4.48.4. Major new feature this month is a rearrangement of how the spam.assassin.prefs.conf is used. This is now linked into the site-rules directory of SpamAssassin, so it is automatically read by SpamAssassin's startup code, and no special file-reading code is done in MailScanner any more. The installation scripts should take care of all of this for you, don't worry. There is also a new feature to reject selected messages with a more polite report than the 1-line error message generated by your MTA when it rejects a message. See the Change Log for more info.
30/11/2005 | Released beta 4.48.3. This adds the ability to reject messages with a polite report being sent back to the originator, rather than just the brief 1 line error message that your MTA will generate if you let it do the job instead of MailScanner. See the Change Log for more info.
23/11/2005 | Released beta 4.48.2. This changes the way that spam.assassin.prefs.conf is used by MailScanner. It now relies on SpamAssassin reading it as part of its normal startup, it is not read specially by MailScanner at all. See the Change Log for more info.
20/11/2005 | Released beta 4.48.1-1. This fixes the Subject MIME-decoding bug among others. See the Change Log for more details.
1/11/2005 | Released stable 4.47.4-2. This should have fixed the init.d script problem with Postfix users on RedHat.
30/10/2005 | Released stable 4.47.4. Please see the Change Log for details of the changes in this release.
30/10/2005 | There has been a major fire at work, which has completely destroyed our silicon fabrication plant and badly burnt a large proportion of the adjoining office and laboratory building. As a result, we currently have no networking, and so I have rebuilt this website at Blacknight Solutions in Ireland. The wiki is currently missing, as are some of the versions of the MailScanner distributions. So I'm sorry if you find a few links don't work, I am plugging the gaps as and when I can. Please bear with me. The next stable release should happen as normal. None of the source code was lost, it is just taking a little while to get to it.
29/10/2005 | Released beta version 4.47.3. The stable release of 4.47 will be based on this release. I have improved the init.d script for new Postfix users. Problem with "Highlight Phishing Fraud" being ignored is fixed. Improved ClamAV+SpamAssassin installation to automatically fix init.pre for you.
14/10/2005 | Released beta version 4.47.2. Fixed bug in the handling of non-existent or empty filename.rules.conf and filetype.rules.conf files, and problem whereby setting of Maximum number of attachments allowed wasn't being honoured properly.
9/10/2005 | Released beta version 4.47.1. Added automatic daily update of phishing.safe.sites.conf file. You can still edit it by hand as well, and all your own additions and changes will be kept. So you don't need to change how you do it by hand at all, it will just automatically get new sites added to it every day, to keep it up to date and stop you having to mess with it manually when you upgrade MailScanner.
1/10/2005 | Released stable version 4.46.2. SpamAssassin 3.1.0 supported better, and a few minor features and bug fixes.
30/09/2005 | Released a beta edition to confirm everything is ready for the stable release tomorrow.
19/09/2005 | Released a beta edition which fixes problems with SpamAssassin 3.1. Previous versions will work okay, but will produce a lot of warning messages..
2/09/2005 | There is a bug in the Convert::TNEF module, which is used by the "internal" TNEF expander. This will only affect Postfix and Exim users. To work around this bug, please apply this patch to TNEF.pm.
1/09/2005 | Released stable version 4.45.4. The "phishing net" can now be controlled to highlight the link, modify the Subject: or both. Web bug handler has been improved. The "phishing net" also now handles URLs containing most common international characters. See the Change Log for a full list of the fixes and new features.
29/08/2005 | Released beta version 4.45.3. Intenational characters in domain names are now handled much better by the phishing net. See the Change Log for a list of all the fixes and new features.
27/08/2005 | Released beta version 4.45.2. You can now choose whether you want to highlight phishing links and/or mofify the Subject: line. It also handles Web Bug detection a whole lot better in the scenario of multiple MailScanners. See the Change Log for a list of all the fixes and new features.
25/08/2005 | Released beta version 4.45.1. You can now quarantine all modified message bodies, regardless of how they were modified. See the Change Log for a list of all the fixes and new features.
13/08/2005 | Black shirts are finally available! I have set up a new on-line store based in Germany that sells some new products with a new version of the MailScanner logo on them. These include a bargain-priced T-shirt, and all the products have much lower delivery costs in Europe and neighbouring countries. The luxury embroidered Polo shirts are very good indeed, I strongly recommend them.
8/08/2005 | The newly updated version of the MailScanner Book is now available for purchase from the MailScanner web site. This has been updated to include all the new features and options up to and including the August 2005 version 4.44. There are 30 pages of new content. If you have the previous edition, you can get a PDF file of the differences or just buy the new version.
3/08/2005 | Released stable version 4.44.6-2. Resolved dependency problems in earlier 4.44 releases. See the Change Log for more details.
1/08/2005 | Released stable version 4.44.6. "Scan Messages" setting added to totally disable all scanning and processing of messages, designed to be used with a ruleset. Various other minor improvements and fixes, including solutions to Postfix problems. See the Change Log for more details.
15/07/2005 | Released beta version 4.44.3. "Scan Messages" setting added to totally disable all scanning and processing of messages, designed to be used with a ruleset. See the Change Log for more details.
11/07/2005 | Released beta version 4.44.2. Fixed bugs in the reporting and scoring of the Custom Spam Scanner. C source code of sample program now also supplied. See the Change Log for more details.
5/07/2005 | Released beta version 4.44.1. Added checks for lack of disk space, an optimisation and a couple of minor bugfixes. See the Change Log for more details.
2/07/2005 | Released stable version 4.43.8. Major new feature this month is the "Generic Spam Scanner" so that you can easily plug in any other spam scanner that you want to use in addition or, or instead of, SpamAssassin. See the Change Log for more details.
21/06/2005 | Released beta version 4.43.3. Various new feature, fixes and improvements, see the Change Log for more details.
7/06/2005 | Updated Clam+SpamAssassin distribution package for SpamAssassin 3.0.4. You can download it and install it with its `install.sh` script.
1/06/2005 | Released stable version 4.42.9. Some new options this month, such as the ability to tag the subject line of messages which have been disarmed, so that users don't waste time trying to work out why the forms in their email messages don't work. Also now passes testvirus.org "null mime-boundary test". For full info, please see the Change Log.
30/05/2005 | Released beta 4.42.8 including major changes to the way new child worker processes are managed.
26/05/2005 | Released beta 4.42.7 including some more bug fixes. See the Change Log for more info.
26/05/2005 | Released beta 4.42.5 including a few new options. See the Change Log for full details of what there is.
23/05/2005 | Fixed null MIME boundary vulnerability, as this bug had crept back in again after the last MIME-tools upgrade.
19/05/2005 | A few fixes, re-written Panda support, Sophos 3.93.2 support, improvements to setup detection and checking of Incoming Work Directory path. Full details in the Change Log.
11/05/2005 | If you are using Sophos version 3.93.2 or later, you need to replace your sophos-autoupdate file with this new version.
30/04/2005 | Released stable version 4.41.3. Major changes this month include support for Solaris 10 and AMD64 Fedora Core 3, wildcards in the phishing.safe.sites.conf, Linux-specific IPv6, many phishing net improvements, and several small bug-fixes. Please read the ChangeLog for full details.
30/04/2005 | Released new version ClamAV+SpamAssassin installation package. This now contains SpamAssassin 3.0.3 and ClamAV 0.84 (the latest of both packages).
27/04/2005 | Releases beta version 4.41.2. Bugfix release. Please read the Change Log for more details.
20/04/2005 | Releases beta version 4.41.1. More improvements to the phishing net, and a few fixes, and support for x86_64 Fedora Core 3 systems in the installation scripts. Please read the Change Log for more details.
13/04/2005 | Announced the new Wiki documentation web site. This supercedes the MAQ and the FAQ and contains all user-written documentation. Please contribute anything you think might be useful to other MailScanner users.
02/04/2005 | Released stable version 4.40.11. Major changes this month include support for RAR 3 archives, removal of multiple Subject: headers, more improvements to the "phishing net", improved RAR archive analysis, support for default setups of Postfix 2.2 and addition of a timeout to the BitDefender updater. For a full list of new features, improvements and fixes, please see the Change Log.
27/03/2005 | Released beta version 4.40.8. Finally fixed the defunct process problem when not virus scanning. Please see the Change Log.
24/03/2005 | Released beta version 4.40.7. Please see the Change Log.
20/03/2005 | Released beta version 4.40.6. Please see the Change Log.
12/03/2005 | Released beta version 4.40.4. Please see the Change Log.
12/03/2005 | Released beta version 4.40.4. Please see the Change Log.
05/03/2005 | Released beta version 4.40.2. This has the addition of unpacking RAR version 3 archives with the "unrar" command. This helps the "clamavmodule" virus scanner scan RAR 3 archives. It is also used to checked the contents of the archives for banned filenames and filetypes, and for checking to see if the RAR archive is password-protected. This uses 2 new configuration options, which will be installed by upgrade_MailScanner_conf.
05/03/2005 | Released beta version 4.40.1. This has one fix, in the area of identifying silent non-forging viruses. If you could test my fix that would be much appreciated.
02/03/2005 | Released stable version 4.39.6. New settings to control the clamavmodule virus scanner, more improvements to the phishing net, and various bug fixes. See the Change Log for more.
28/02/2005 | Released beta version 4.39.4. Bug fixes, more checks in the phishing net, and fine control over all ClamAV settings when using the clamavmodule scanner. See the Change Log for more details.
17/02/2005 | Released beta version 4.39.1. Mostly a collection of fixes. See the Change Log for more details.

Old News...

|  | Translate this page to |  |

Julian Field and my home page