Spam Vigilante - Mail Filter Virtual Appliance

A mail proxy based on FreeBSD with spam (SpamAssassin) and virus (ClamAV) scanning. Can be used with any existing mail system.

Description

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Spam Vigilante - Mail Filter Virtual Appliance
1. Introduction and Benefits

This virtual machine mail filter appliance is designed to give small
businesses and organizations the ability to deploy spam and virus
checking for their e-mail communications in only minutes.
It accomplishes this by acting as preprocessor or proxy, retrieving
and scanning all incoming mail and then forwarding it to its final
destination. It offers the unique benefits of allowing users to view
and delete quarantined messages through a custom, easy-to-use web
interface, and account integration with Microsoft Exchange and Active
Directory via LDAP, if that server is also being used.

Open source and free software is used throughout, so no licensing
costs are incurred. Because users do not access the filter directly,
its deployment can be completely transparent, and no user account
details need to reside on the appliance. This means the filter can be
integrated equally well into both new and existing mail
infrastructures and is compatible with any mail system which can
accept SMTP connections (virtually any Internet-capable mail system).
In addition to traditional SMTP operation, the mail filter can act in
a "fetching" mode, where messages are retrieved from a remote host,
such as a hosting provider, which is ideal for businesses that have
their e-mail services hosted by a third-party.

2. Construction

The appliance
is built on the FreeBSD 6.1 operating system using a minimal package set. Other
components beyond the base operating system, such as Postfix and SpamAssassin,
were installed from packages and ports. The package set is kept at a minimum,
and the total installation size, unpacked, is under 800MB.
After installation, all the mail and scanning components are configured to work in concert.
The configuration is used as the basis for templates for a custom wizard to
configure the system very quickly for deployment in new network environments.
Viewing messages quarantined by scanner is possible through a specially-written,
easy-to-use web interface. If Microsoft Exchange and Active Directory
are used on the network, the viewer can use them for authentication and for
providing an allowed recipients list ro the SMTP server. In the viewer,
users can open their own messages and the administrator can view the messages of
any user. The viewer also offers the ability to delete messages from the
quarantine. Other items have been added to the system to facilitate
maintenance, such as monitoring the size of the quarantine directory, automated
indexing of the quarantine's contents, and automated creation of SSL certificates
for Apache if the web viewer is enabled.

3. Instructions and Documentation

To start
using the appliance, login with the username 'root' with the password 'password'. Follow
the steps of setup wizard and reboot. If the web viewer
is enabled on the system, one can login into it at https://<hostname>/viewer
with the username 'vadmin' and the password 'password'. Detailed documentation
is included within the package located at docs/mailfilter-documentation.html
and within the appliance at /usr/share/docs/mailfilter, and on the web.

4. Troubleshooting & Updates

The first release of the Spam Viewer web application contained two small
bugs. One prevents the 'vadmin' user from changing his password through the web
interface if Exchange authentication is being used. The other prevents messages
quarantined for bad headers from being viewed. To obtain a patch that fixes both
of these issues please e-mail the author at telackey |at| redbudcomputer.com
with "Spam Vigilante" in the title or download the latest updates from
http://www.redbudcomputer.com/downloads.htm. As new features are added
or new fixes are made, they will be added to that page.
A change log of fixes is available, as well as instructions for applying updates.

5. Software Used

amavisd-new 2.4.1
GNU Public License

Apache 2.0.58
Apache License

clamav 0.88.2
GNU Public License

Fetchmail 6.3.2
GNU Public License

FreeBSD 6.1
BSD License

mod_python 3.2.8
Apache License v2.0

OpenSSH 4.2
BSD License

OpenSSL 0.9.7e
OpenSSL (Apache-style) License

Perl 5.8.8
Artistic License

Postfix 2.2.9
IBM Public License v1.0

pysqlite 2.1.3
pysqlite Open Source License

Python 2.4.2
Python 2.4 License

python-ldap 2.2.0
python-ldap (Python-style) License v1.1

Quixote 2.4
CNRI Open Source License

Razor 2.81
Artistic License

session2
MIT License

SpamAssassin 3.1.1
Apache License

Spam Viewer
(Original Work)
Creative Commons Attribution License v2.5

6. Size

The size of the uncompressed appliance package is 784MB.

Last updated: 08/13/2006

Operating system: FreeBSD 6.1

Applications installed:
Apache 2.0.58 clamav 0.88.2 Fetchmail 6.3.2 FreeBSD 6.1 mod_python 3.2.8 OpenSSH 4.2 OpenSSL 0.9.7e Perl 5.8.8 Postfix 2.2.9 pysqlite 2.1.3 Python 2.4.2 python-ldap 2.2.0 Quixote 2.4 Razor 2.81 session2 SpamAssassin 3.1.1 Spam Viewer

VMware Tools installed: No

Size: 155 MB
Torrent available: Yes
(What is BitTorrent?)

Primary account
Username: root
Password: password

Submitted by: telackey

Download link provided by the submitter, not VMware. Report broken downloads here.

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