I use SA as a "helper app" within my custom written spam filter. So I'll
get SA give me an opinion about certain marginal messages, and then my
spam filter factors the SA score into my spam filter's scoring.
Recently, a prominent law firm for whom I host mail - was complaining
about FPs where messages from a prominent real estate company were not
making it to them. Interestingly, their messages kept hitting RAZOR,
where SA was giving the following response:
1.7 RAZOR2_CHECK Listed in Razor2 (http://razor.sf.net/)
0.4 RAZOR2_CF_RANGE_51_100 Razor2 gives confidence level above 50%
[cf: 100]
2.4 RAZOR2_CF_RANGE_E8_51_100 Razor2 gives engine 8 confidence level
above 50%
[cf: 100]
In testing, I narrowed it all the way down to simply the following
(alone!) hitting on razor:
either
http://www.example.com
or
http://example.com
(except with the sender's domain, of course)
...either one was triggering this razor score. I even put that as the
ONLY body text of another message (so a totally different header) - and
it still triggered. But either variation WITHOUT the "http://; part did
not trigger.
Interesting... this domain name happens to resolve to an IP that is
currently blacklisted on Zen. (I know, that is really really bad!)
Unfortunately, that confuses issues!
Does RAZOR extract domains from links and checks them against a bad
domain database... sort of how SURBL works... and/or check the IP that
they resolve to? (I don't think so, but now I have to ask just to be sure!)
If not... this seems to go beyond checksum-checking of parts of a
message - this seems much more surgical/specific than that.
Don't get me wrong... I'm a big fan of razor and of other
checksum-technologies. But I'm sort of shaken by this because I always
thought a FP for razor would be much more difficult due to larger
portions of a message having to match a checksum match in order to have
a hit. (sort of like a larger "fingerprint" that is not easily
duplicated in another innocent message, allegedly making FPs practically
impossible)
While this kind of more surgical strike can be beneficial in blocking
more spam - it seems like it changes the paradigm of what I
(mistakenly?) thought to be RAZOR's potential for collateral damage.
Is this "extra curricular activity"? or did I misunderstand RAZOR's
checksum technique?
--
Rob McEwen
