CONTACT:
Eric Wilde
BSM Development
44 Whitewood Circle
Norwood, MA 02062
Phone: 781-551-0153x600
Web: http://www.bsmdevelopment.com
Email: info@bsmdevelopment.com
Mail Filtering Software Now Supports Virus Scanning and
Archiving
Norwood, MA -- January 15, 2009 -- BSM Development (www.bsmdevelopment.com) announces that the 2.0 release of MailCorral, a Unix/Linux-based mail filtering program which is available for download from the company's Web site, can filter email messages that contain viruses via its interface to the industry-standard virus scanner ClamAV.
The user simply needs to install ClamAV and configure its signature-updating mechanism in the usual manner to enable the virus scanner used by MailCorral. Once this is done, a few, simple changes to the MailCorral configuration will cause all email messages transmitted by the system on which it is installed to be scanned for viruses. Detected viruses will be automatically deleted from any email message in which they are found while the unaltered message will be retained in a quarantine area where it can be safely accessed, if necessary.
The same kind of message alteration techniques that the users have come to accept for spam handling allow the users to be informed of MailCorral's virus mitigation actions and instruct them on the steps to be taken to retrieve quarantined messsages, accompanied by stern warnings regarding the seriousness of opening virus-laden messages. Should they wish, the retrieval process itself can be made automatic for ISPs who do not want to devote any support resources to message recovery.
Clam AntiVirus is an open source (GPL) anti-virus toolkit for UNIX, designed especially for e-mail scanning on mail gateways. It provides a number of utilities including a flexible and scalable multi-threaded daemon, a command line scanner and advanced tool for automatic database updates. Using ClamAV to provide virus identifcation for MailCorral allows it to implement a widely-utilized, signature-based virus scanning scheme that employs frequently-updated signatures to identify all types of virus threats in scanned email messages. This augments the built-in system of attachment and MIME type identification already employed by MailCorral to provide a solid line of defense against email-bourne viruses.
MailCorral 2.0 also integrates support for third-party archivers into the product. Third-party archivers usually work by sending the messages to be archived to an archive program through regular email delivery channels. The MTA that is archiving its messages makes a copy of each message, alters the "To:" address to point to the archive program and injects the message into the regular email delivery stream.
MailCorral supports third-party archivers by sending a copy of each message that it filters to the third-party archiver, in the manner described above, if the system is configured to archive messages for the email recipient. Thus, MailCorral can be set up to forward messages to the archiver for everyone or just certain users who wish to avail themselves of the archiving feature.
Further, MailCorral assists with archive message delivery by watching for times when the third-party archive program becomes unavailable (e.g. through a network failure). At those times, the regular email delivery protocol necessitates that a bounceback message be generated. Since the "From:" address of any duplicated messages sent to a third-party archiver is not usually altered (in the interests of archiving accuracy), the bounceback goes back to the original sender of the message, which probably comes as a huge surprise to them.
MailCorral now can be configured to silently delete bounceback messages from third-party archivers so as not to confuse original message senders when messages sent by them are bounced by some unknown-to-them recipient. This feature can be enabled in MailCorral, regardless of how the messages were originally directed to the third-party archiver. Thus, MTAs such as Scalix, which directly handle the copying and forwarding of messages for archiving, to the third-party archiver, are still supported when it comes to deletion of spurious bounceback messages.
In addition to MailCorral, BSM Development also offers the mail handling product SpamCorral, an Email Filter Validation Suite and an Email Redirector.
SpamCorral sends a notification message to each spam recipient, once a day (or more frequently if you choose), showing them all of the spam that they would have received in the past day and listing its details. The recipient has the option of replying to the notification, to request that specific pieces of spam be remailed to them or ignoring it altogether. The annoyance of dealing with spam is kept to a very short amount of time and only happens once a day. If the recipient ignores the notification, the spam is silently deleted by SpamCorral. In a typical case, the spam recipient spends twenty or thirty seconds a day dealing with all of their received spam, most of which is deleted automatically. However, those one or two important pieces that were accidetally misidentified as spam will not be lost or left to languish in the spam folder.
The Email Filter Validation Suite is a set of specially-crafted email messages that are designed to test all aspects of email filter operation, including spam detection, virus detection and archiver bouncebacks. It contains messages that employ the common methods of payload hiding that are utilized by spammers and bad guys to disguise spam and viruses. By passing the messages in this suite through an email filter installation, you can verify the correct operation of your email filter to prove that it is catching all of the things that it should.
For more information about these
products, see the company's products Web page,
http://www.bsmdevelopment.com/Products/,
email
info@bsmdevelopment.com
or phone 781-551-0153x600.