 syslog
Last month, I asked readers to let me know how
they're dealing with spam. My questions were prompted by a lack of
articles submitted for the June spam issue. From the responses that I
received, the consensus seems to be that third-party tools handle the
problem well enough that sys admins don't have to worry too much
about it. However, there are issues still to be dealt with. Jim Edwards put
it like this:
By way of explanation, he says:
1. The problem has mostly been solved. There are some
simple solutions that work very well. We use Brightmail because we get a
lot of email from the public, and Brightmail has a very low false-positive
rate. 60% of our incoming email is spam, and about 2% of it gets through...
The reason no one wrote about it is that there really isn't much else
to say that hasn't already been said.
2. Spam is like traffic, taxes, and death. It is a
simple fact of life on the Internet. If you have email, you're gonna
have spam; just like if you have a car, you're gonna deal with
traffic. If I already have a 98% effective solution in place, is it really
worth my time and effort to try to weed out the other 2%? Take into that
the fact that the second I come up with a solution, the spammers are going
to come up with a way to beat it.
I also asked readers to tell me what article topics
they'd like to see in the future and received a wish for these
spam articles: "How to write SpamAssassin Rules", "A
Comparison of Anti-Spam Services", "A Survey of Anti-Spam
Applications", and "How Bayesian Filtering Works".
G.K. Meier responded with suggestions in other areas:
- How to configure best-of-breed open
source software as application layer firewall proxies.
- How to build reflexive open source
firewalls to dynamically reconfigure rules and real-time alerting, and
integration with IDS systems.
- Hardening examples of (Unix-like) Web and
file servers deployed in DMZs.
- How to build read-only, flash-based file
system images to reduce maintenance, and control sensitive information for
use as a hard drive replacement for use with Citrix, SSL VPNs, MS Terminal
Services, and VoIP.
- Methods to allow Unix-like systems to
authenticate against Active Directory, using software such as LDAP-UX,
OpenLDAP Bridges, and Radius.
I thank all of you who wrote to me and who kindly
allowed me to share your responses. If you have other suggestions for
articles that you'd like to see in Sys Admin or if you'd
care to submit an article on your own pet topic, please email me at: aankerholz@cmp.com or send a
proposal directly to Rikki at: rendsley@cmp.com.
Sincerely yours,
Amber Ankerholz
Editor in Chief
|