Network World: Popular open source spam filter gets boost

New tool from SpamAssassin slows down the transmission of spam into corporate e-mail systems
By Carolyn Duffy Marsan, Senior Editor, Enterprise Applications
19 May 2008 | IDG News Service


SpamAssassin, popular open source spam-filtering software, will have deadlier aim thanks to an add-on tool that is being offered free of charge to small businesses and individuals by MailChannels.


The tool -- called Traffic Control 3 -- is an e-mail traffic-shaping package that slows down the transmission of spam into corporate e-mail systems. MailChannels officials say Traffic Control 3 will reduce spam volumes by 50 percent to 75 percent for SpamAssassin users.

"Our technology is a software package that slows down spam from suspicious sources like spam bots,'' says Ken Simpson, CEO of MailChannels. "Our research shows that 90 percent of spammers will give up before delivering spam if the data rate of the connection is slowed down.''

With less spam entering their networks, companies will need fewer mail servers to process or store e-mail for their end users.

MailChannels has sold Traffic Control 3 to enterprise customers such as Pacific Gas & Electric, Cornell University, and Wyeth for two years. Now MailChannels is offering a low-end version of its software to small businesses and individuals that use SpamAssassin.

Traffic control 3 for SpamAssassin is available today.

"E-mail traffic shaping is a technique used by many of the world's largest e-mail receivers,'' Simpson said. "We're trying to make this technology available to everyone.''

More than 150,000 Web sites use SpamAssassin to filter their e-mail traffic, Simpson says.

"SpamAssassin supports hundreds of millions of users. But SpamAssassin is limited because it is just a content filter,'' he adds.

Simpson says MailChannels is giving the open source community access to its Traffic Control 3 software to spread the word of how well the software works and to get feedback from users.

"We know our stuff works, but the only way we have to show that was to put it out there,'' Simpson says. "When you feed the open source community, the investment comes back and pays dividends.''

One customer very pleased with Traffic Control 3 is AlaWeb Pioneer Services, a small, rural ISP that operates in Alabama and Florida. AlaWeb supports 10,000 mailboxes and several hundred domains using Sendmail as its mail transfer agent software.

AlaWeb began using MailChannel's Traffic Control software in front of Sendmail to filter all of its incoming mail in 2005 when its spam volume went through the roof.

"Yesterday, we got 7.5 million spam, of which we filtered over 99 percent,'' says Hugh Messenger, senior network administrator for AlaWeb. "Traffic Control inserts itself between the heavy-lifting, mail-processing software and the client trying to contact you. It weeds out a huge amount of the spam with very simple, very quick techniques, the primary one being that it throttles down the speed of the connection. ... Within 15 to 20 seconds, about 90 percent of the real spammerswill have disconnected and gone away. Just the simple act of tar-pitting gets rid of a huge amount of spam in a very small, lightweight process.''

Messenger says Traffic Control helps him reduce the number of mail servers he needs to support his customers.

"Before MailChannels, when I was just running Sendmail, I could support tops about 100 inbound connections per machine. Since I put in Traffic Control, I can support 2,500 to 3,000 connections,'' he says. `"I don't even know how many machines I'd need if I didn't have MailChannels.''

MailChannels Announces First Commercial-Grade Email Traffic Shaping for SpamAssassin Users

New Software Add-On Improves SpamAssassin Effectiveness by 85 Percent

VANCOUVER, Canada - May 19, 2008 - MailChannels Corporation, the global leader in email traffic shaping software, today announced that Apache SpamAssassin users can now download Traffic Control to dramatically enhance the performance of SpamAssassin. Traffic Control uses email traffic shaping to reduce spam by 85 percent more than blacklisting while delivering a 50 to 100-fold improvement in peak load handling. With this release, SpamAssassin users can join leading universities, service providers, and Fortune 500 companies, who have benefited from Traffic Control’s ability to provide a more reliable and cost effective email service.

Traffic Control 3 for SpamAssassin is available at http://mailchannels.com/download. Commercial use requires a license. A 30-day evaluation is provided free of charge.

“Traffic Control for SpamAssassin is an effective add-on that Apache SpamAssassin administrators large and small should evaluate,” said Justin Mason, author of SpamAssassin. “It is clear that there is no perfect defense to spam, and while SpamAssassin provides a level of protection, it can be resource-intensive. Traffic Control for SpamAssassin provides comprehensive coverage of a wide spectrum of spam and other threats, while delivering major scalability benefits.”

Despite the improving accuracy of SpamAssassin, email administrators still struggle to keep up with the continuous onslaught of new spam outbreaks. Spammers respond to better filter accuracy by increasing the volume of spam that they send. Since spam volume is unpredictable, periodic outbreaks overwhelm email systems causing delivery delays and allowing unacceptable amounts of spam to pass into end user inboxes. SpamAssassin is a great spam filter, but like other spam filters it needs to be paired with an effective protocol-layer defense.

Ongoing analysis of customer data by MailChannels shows that 85 percent of spammers abort email delivery when they are connected to a server that severely restricts their bandwidth. Traffic Control exploits this characteristic spammer behavior and others to deflect a significant portion of spam “in flight” before it hits the spam filter or mail server. High spam traffic impacts overall email by creating email delivery delays. After deploying Traffic Control, SpamAssassin users that are experiencing slow times to process messages will see a dramatic drop in email connection traffic.

About MailChannels

MailChannels Corporation is the global leader in email traffic shaping software, providing the most effective protocol-layer spam filtering to email receivers of all sizes. The company’s flagship product, Traffic Control, combines an ultra efficient multiplexing SMTP proxy with real-time reputation data to prioritize email traffic before it hits the mail server. MailChannels Traffic Control protects email users at Fortune 500 companies, leading service providers, and universities worldwide. Recognized by the MIT Spam Conference and other leading authorities on spam, MailChannels is headquartered in Vancouver, Canada.

For more information, call (604) 685-7488

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Contacts:
Dave McKee, Steve Marquis
Schwartz Communications, Inc.
(781) 684-0700
MailChannels@schwartz-pr.com