The new version of spam filtering arrives, SpamAssassin 4.0

After several months of development, the launch of the new version of SpamAssassin 4.0 was announced, a version in which some internal changes have been made, such as the change of names in the white list and black list, improvements and more.

For those who don't know about SpamAssassin It is a spam filtering program. which uses a variety of spam detection techniques, including DNS and fuzzy-checksum-based spam detection, filtering, external programs, blacklists, and online databases. The program can be integrated with the mail server to automatically filter all mail from a site.

It can also be run by individual users in their own mailbox and integrates with various email programs. Apache SpamAssassin it is highly configurable if used as a whole system filter.

SpamAssassin implements a comprehensive approach to making a decision on the blocko: A message undergoes a series of checks (context analysis, DNSBL black and white lists, trained Bayesian classifiers, signature verification, sender authentication using SPF and DKIM, etc.).

Main new features of SpamAssassin 4.0

In this new version of SpamAssassin 4.0, it is highlighted that the words "whitelist" and "blacklist" in rules, functions, plugins and options have been replaced by “welcomelist” and “blocklist” (it is mentioned that backward compatibility of the old references to "whitelist" and "blacklist" will be maintained at least until version 4.1.0).

Another of the changes that stands out in the new version is that fully integrated multibyte character and message processing implemented in UTF-8 encoding, as well as significantly improved text handling in languages ​​other than English.

In addition to this, we can also find that the complement was added Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::ExtractText to extract text from attachments and add it to the body of the text, against which all spam detection rules apply, as well as adding the Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::DMARC plugin to check for compliance messages with DMARC policy after parsing scan results via DKIM and SPF.

Added plugin Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::DecodeShortURLs to check if short links are used in URLs and determine the destination URL by sending an HTTP request to the service, after which the expanded URL can be processed by regular rules and plugins, such as URIDNSBL.
Removed the previously deprecated HashCash plugin.

Utility sa-update has added forcemirror options to force link to a specific mirror, score-multiplier to multiply all weights for a specific update server by a given value, and score-limit to limit the weights for a specific update server.

Of the other changes that stand out from this new version:

• Improved support for client SSL certificates.
• The Bayesian Classifier plugin has been enhanced to include support for dropping common words in languages ​​other than English.
• In the OLEVBMacro add-in, the definition of Microsoft Office macros and dangerous content has been expanded, and document link extraction has been provided.
• Support for Authenticated Received Chain (ARC) signatures has been added to the DKIM plugin.
• The normalize_charset setting is enabled by default.
• The Mail::SPF::Query module has been deprecated, it is recommended to use the Mail::SPF plugin to work with SPF.
• Added the "nolog" flag to disable reflection on the log of the processing results of certain rules.
• Added razor_fork and pyzor_fork settings to fork separate processes for Razor2 and Pyzor and work with them asynchronously.
• Sending DNS and DCC queries in asynchronous mode is provided.

If you are interested in learning more about it, you can consult the details at the following link.

Finally for those who want to get this new version they can get the source code from the following link or on the other hand, wait for the corresponding binaries for the different Linux distributions to be built and updated in the corresponding channels.