FREE ASSP X (ASSP eXtended - WHM addon with cPanel interface)

[ispro]

You should already saw our responses on that. asspcheck script is completely rewritten in perl, it has no third party's part. That's is.

Enjoy!

P.S. ASSP X is currently used on ~60 servers! I believe the number will grow rapidly

[boeki]

afaik, the claim was not for part of main asspx script but for the script that checks if assp is running.

this has been corrected by ispro by removing the subject script and putting in his own perl script.

[ispro]

Yes, it is true. So I feel no further discussions on this matter is needed.

[rs-freddo]

After testing ASSP we found out that you have to be careful using it on hosting servers. If an account has filters turned off, their mail is still processed by those "off" filters and the sender IP is still allocated a Penalty Box score. An IP can go into the Penalty Box Blacklist even though the recipient has all filters off.

Lets take an example where someone on your Server does not want to mess with teaching the Bayesian Filter - they turn it off. Mail coming to that domain still goes through the Bayesian Filter and the Bayesian Filter thinks it's SPAM (Remember Bayesian Filter hasn't been taught "what is spam" because the user turned it off). Because it's determined to be SPAM it's gets the appropriate Penalty Box score, eventually that sender IP goes into the Penalty Box blacklist and no more mail is received from them.

I have tried ASSP and this is the EXACT scenario that happened to me. Use ASSP at your own risk.

I also notice that any mail sent from an ISP automatically fails PTR check. Eventually people that send from ISP's would be PB Blacklisted too.

I also noticed Bombre marked email as spam because of a non-existent virus.

My personal opinion is that ASSP is very beta.

This post is not made to undermine people creating third party frontends, but to just give a heads up to server owners that don't spend the time checking to make sure software works properly. As a server owner myself, I would appreciate this warning.

[rs-freddo]

The workaround for this is to go into the web interface and then Penalty box and change the score to zero for each of the filters that your clients can turn off. Probably the only filters that should have a score would be:
Failed Relay Attempt - block relay attempts
Invalid Recipient - block dictionary attacks

[ispro]

You may change "Scoring Interval" during which decided either to block IP or not. Actually it is not a problem for most servers, good IPs work well while just some specific situations may cause problems and require additional setup Penalty Box setup. It is also possible to set pbTestMode to 1 (e.g. Penalty Box to Test Mode) and no IPs will be rejected.

Anyway, thank you for warning, I will additionally check either domain listed at pb_spam_lover contribute to the Penalty Box...

[ispro]

P.S. While replying to you I have forgotten that with ASSP X one may put his domain(s) on Not Processed list. In this case this domain won't contribute to the Penalty Box and no emails will be denied. So, please, check this carefully and you will find that there are more possibilities to control emails flow than you have thought

[ispro]

To your information ASSP X has ALL ASSP filters configurable via cPanel interface so customers may add their domains to Penalty Box spam lover list.

[gotroot]

Cleaning Exim configuration is recommended. The script is check for most important settings without which ASSP won't work properly!

We may think about adding the option to install recommended exim.conf (including exim.conf.local for further rebuilds). Do you feel it may be helpful? Let me know.

I also thinking about ability to globally turn test mode On/Off via WHM interface. Is is the thing you need?

Hi so far one major problem im seeing are all the spam messages being feed to the /spam directory but they are never being converted using /usr/local/assp/scripts/move2num.pl -r so those messages that are not converted to numbers are piling up. I looked at your cron jobs and there is nothing there that executes it. Note, the default setting in ASSP is set to report based on subject not number so assp never picks it up for processing. Please note, there is nothing in ASSP that will convert it. Its must be converted by running move2num manually after testing is over and if you know ASSP you need to turn that check mark off in the config but most people dont know its there.

Thank you.

[gotroot]

After testing ASSP we found out that you have to be careful using it on hosting servers. If an account has filters turned off, their mail is still processed by those "off" filters and the sender IP is still allocated a Penalty Box score. An IP can go into the Penalty Box Blacklist even though the recipient has all filters off.

Thats correct but i dont see why this is a problem. Load up ASSP and select the Penalty option and set all scores to ZERO.

Lets take an example where someone on your Server does not want to mess with teaching the Bayesian Filter -

Ahh but this is one thing you dont want to enable. Bayesian filters with ASSP dont work that great. On our servers they are turned off at the ASSP config level. Then, its never used for lookups.

they turn it off. Mail coming to that domain still goes through the Bayesian Filter and the Bayesian Filter thinks it's SPAM (Remember Bayesian Filter hasn't been taught "what is spam" because the user turned it off). Because it's determined to be SPAM it's gets the appropriate Penalty Box score, eventually that sender IP goes into the Penalty Box blacklist and no more mail is received from them.

I have tried ASSP and this is the EXACT scenario that happened to me. Use ASSP at your own risk.

I also notice that any mail sent from an ISP automatically fails PTR check. Eventually people that send from ISP's would be PB Blacklisted too.

I also noticed Bombre marked email as spam because of a non-existent virus.

My personal opinion is that ASSP is very beta.

This post is not made to undermine people creating third party frontends, but to just give a heads up to server owners that don't spend the time checking to make sure software works properly. As a server owner myself, I would appreciate this warning.

You will need to test ASSP on your server to determine what you want. If you dont want something on, turn it off in the ASSP config by load it from the port you have it configured then its not used. Just dont reload the default config from the ASSPX option othewise all options get set back to default.

Its the best spam solution out there. You just need to work with it. And dont use Bayes.

Good luck.

[gotroot]

Another thing i would like to see;

REQUEST: While its nice to disable all filter for users there would be a BIG advantage to allow the admin to require certain filters to run all the time and something users could not turn off.

For eg, one of the best functions of ASSP is the ability to delay, greylisting. Another is URILB looks. If for example i wanted to ensure that both these items were ON for everyone by default then users could not turn them on or off and would be forced to have it enabled on their accounts.

Likewise, the admin should have the ability to control this from WHM.

Thank you.

[gotroot]

Our installation of ASSP is custom. We did it ouselves over a course of a few months on all our FreeBSD boxes. We have been running ASSP for over 6 months btw. One thing we see in our logs is this on the hours is this;

Mar-29-07 04:00:58 Saving whitelist
Mar-29-07 04:00:58 Saving redlist
Mar-29-07 04:00:58 Saving delaying records
Mar-29-07 04:00:58 Saving penalty records
Mar-29-07 04:00:58 Saving cache records
Mar-29-07 04:00:58 Cleaning up delaying databases ...
Mar-29-07 04:00:58 Cleaning delaying database (triplets) finished; keys before=344, deleted=18
Mar-29-07 04:00:58 Cleaning delaying database (whitelisted tuplets) finished; keys before=367, deleted=0
Mar-29-07 04:00:58 Saving penalty records
Mar-29-07 04:00:58 Saving cache records
Mar-29-07 04:00:58 Cleaning penalty records...
Mar-29-07 04:00:58 PB: cleaning black finished; IPs before=503, deleted=13
Mar-29-07 04:00:58 Cleaning cache records...
Mar-29-07 04:00:58 RBLCache: cleaning cache finished; IPs before=8, deleted=1
Mar-29-07 04:00:58 URIBLCache: cleaning cache finished; Domains before=163, deleted=0

But, we do not see this when its installed via your module on a cPanel server so my question is, how is this handled? This is a very important cleanup thats supposed to execute on the hour. I dont see any evidance of it when installed as a cPanel module.

[TDD]

in WHM interface if we use "Disable filters for all domains" and then if we wish to enable all filters for all domains then how to it?

Any idea?

[gotroot]

P.S. While replying to you I have forgotten that with ASSP X one may put his domain(s) on Not Processed list. In this case this domain won't contribute to the Penalty Box and no emails will be denied. So, please, check this carefully and you will find that there are more possibilities to control emails flow than you have thought

Have you check this? Its possible that there is a big fat bug in ASSP. I mean, we did a test and placed all users in the non process list. The end results is.

Scores are still being added
RBL checks are still being performed
SPF and no MX/A record checks are still being checked
Bayesian still being reported even after we turned it off in the config

I dont think the no process list is working properly. It should be reporting, user is spam lover and pass the message on without any checking.

[ispro]

in WHM interface if we use "Disable filters for all domains" and then if we wish to enable all filters for all domains then how to it?

Any idea?

just empty all /usr/local/assp/rules/*_spam_lover files and you enable filters (if they are allowed, of course!).