[sniffer] SNF Now directly supported in IMGate!

2008-10-09 Thread Pete McNeil
Hello Sniffer Folks,

Message Sniffer is now directly supported in Len Conrad's IMGate.
IMGate + SNF allows you to move your spam filtering out in front of
your mail server improving scalability, stability, and performance.

Here are some links:

http://www.imgate.net/?page_id=101

http://www.imgate.net/?page_id=111

Best,

_M

-- 
Pete McNeil
Chief Scientist,
Arm Research Labs, LLC.


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[sniffer] Re: SNF Now directly supported in IMGate!

2008-10-09 Thread Andy Schmidt
Hi,

Hopefully, you'll be able to convince Alligate and ORF next to use your new
DLL API to scan the content during the SMTP connection without needing the
command line environment...

Best Regards,
Andy

-Original Message-
From: Message Sniffer Community [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf
Of Pete McNeil
Sent: Thursday, October 09, 2008 12:12 PM
To: Message Sniffer Community
Subject: [sniffer] SNF Now directly supported in IMGate!

Hello Sniffer Folks,

Message Sniffer is now directly supported in Len Conrad's IMGate.
IMGate + SNF allows you to move your spam filtering out in front of
your mail server improving scalability, stability, and performance.

Here are some links:

http://www.imgate.net/?page_id=101

http://www.imgate.net/?page_id=111

Best,

_M

-- 
Pete McNeil
Chief Scientist,
Arm Research Labs, LLC.


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[sniffer] Re: SNF Now directly supported in IMGate!

2008-10-09 Thread Pete McNeil
Hello Andy,

Thursday, October 9, 2008, 12:27:53 PM, you wrote:

 Hi,

 Hopefully, you'll be able to convince Alligate and ORF next to use your new
 DLL API to scan the content during the SMTP connection without needing the
 command line environment...

We have approached Alligate and ORF about this. There are many ways to
integrate w/ SNF. Everyone has their own needs and priorities. We will
continue to support new and better ways to integrate SNF with these
and other platforms as the opportunities arise.

It always helps to have customers making the suggestion though ;-)

_M

-- 
Pete McNeil
Chief Scientist,
Arm Research Labs, LLC.


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[sniffer] ASSP Threshold

2008-10-09 Thread Andy Schmidt
Hi Pete,

  SNF code spam threshold (ASSP_SNF_Threshold)
The SNF result code threshold that is considered spam. SNF result codes
at
this level or above will be considered spam for the purposes of ASSP
scoring. The default value of 20 is good in most cases.

Are the result codes these:
http://kb.armresearch.com/index.php?title=Message_Sniffer.TechnicalDetails.R
esultCodes

If so, I don't think that this can be handled with a greater than type of
threshold, since your list from 20 to 63 are not at all in order of
severity (e.g., Caution is higher than Truncate, Experimental is higher
than Malware etc.).

I would say this parameter would have to be a comma-delimited list of result
codes that you want to treat as Spam - or, if there is some confidence
factor that Sniffer uses internally, then that could be translated into an
ASSP score...

Best Regards,
Andy 



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[sniffer] Re: ASSP Threshold

2008-10-09 Thread Pete McNeil
Hello Andy,

Thursday, October 9, 2008, 2:00:49 PM, you wrote:

  SNF code spam threshold (ASSP_SNF_Threshold)
 The SNF result code threshold that is considered spam.

snip/

 If so, I don't think that this can be handled with a greater than type of
 threshold, since your list from 20 to 63 are not at all in order of
 severity (e.g., Caution is higher than Truncate, Experimental is higher
 than Malware etc.).

Strictly speaking, SNF doesn't really use a weighting or severity
paradigm. SNF is a discrete logic system-- something either matches or
it doesn't.

There are different result codes for different rule groups but with
few exceptions a match in any rule group is an accurate indicator of
spam.

Where the pattern matching engine crosses with the IP reputation
system (GBUdb) the only result code you might not want to trust at the
same level is the caution result -- but in most cases there is no
meaningful distinction.

 I would say this parameter would have to be a comma-delimited list of result
 codes that you want to treat as Spam - or, if there is some confidence
 factor that Sniffer uses internally, then that could be translated into an
 ASSP score...

I'm not sure what is possible with the plugin interface.

The design of the plugin at the moment is a binary decision-- either
the message is spam, or not. There is no way to say how spammy
except to tune the plugin overall.

Based on that limitation we ended up with a threshold.

As a matter of convention, all nonzero SNF results indicate spam.

The exception to this is when we create specialized rules. When we do
this we usually code those rule groups with a symbol value (result
code) at or below 10. For example, system specific white rules are
usually coded to result code 1.

After that there are really only 3 significant levels associated
with SNF result codes.

The caution result (40) _might_ be considered less certain that the
other rules-- though the default tuning for the caution range is very
conservative.

The ordinary result codes for pattern matches are considered reliable.

Finally, a truncate (20) result indicates that the IP reputation is so
bad that there is no need to look at the contents. This result could
be considered more certain than ordinary.

---

With regard to the caution result - that can be tuned using the GBUdb
parameters-- or it can even be turned off. That would leave the
remaining result codes 20 and above which are all considered reliable.

---

In the best world you would be able to translate any SNF result code
to any weight you want but that doesn't seem possible in the ASSP
plugin API.

If it is then please let me know and I'll look into making that
adjustment.

That said though-- even when SNF users have the ability to translate
SNF results individually, in practice they don't. There doesn't seem
to be a need as each nonzero result is a very accurate indicator of
spam.

The one exception that some systems might find is the caution result
and if that proves to be a problem they can turn off that result in
the SNF configuration.

Hope this helps,

Thanks!

_M


-- 
Pete McNeil
Chief Scientist,
Arm Research Labs, LLC.


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[sniffer] Re: ASSP Threshold

2008-10-09 Thread Andy Schmidt
Hi:

 The design of the plugin at the moment is a binary decision-- either
the message is spam, or not. 

I understand - but currently the plugin has a config option that performs a
Resultcode = Threshold test. I think it would be more appropriate to have
a Resultcode in (n, n, n...)  test. It doesn't affect the logic and
doesn't add more complexity - but would allow more control over what is
rejected as SPAM on the same level as ORF (where you can configure which
Resultcodes to block outright), albeit not quite as much as Declude.

I would want to block some result codes outright during the connection
(based on a resultcode list as in ORF) and allow other resultcodes (in which
I have lesser confidence) to go through and be subject to other tests.

Best Regards,
Andy

-Original Message-
From: Message Sniffer Community [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf
Of Pete McNeil
Sent: Thursday, October 09, 2008 3:01 PM
To: Message Sniffer Community
Subject: [sniffer] Re: ASSP Threshold

Hello Andy,

Thursday, October 9, 2008, 2:00:49 PM, you wrote:

  SNF code spam threshold (ASSP_SNF_Threshold)
 The SNF result code threshold that is considered spam.

snip/

 If so, I don't think that this can be handled with a greater than type
of
 threshold, since your list from 20 to 63 are not at all in order of
 severity (e.g., Caution is higher than Truncate, Experimental is higher
 than Malware etc.).

Strictly speaking, SNF doesn't really use a weighting or severity
paradigm. SNF is a discrete logic system-- something either matches or
it doesn't.

There are different result codes for different rule groups but with
few exceptions a match in any rule group is an accurate indicator of
spam.

Where the pattern matching engine crosses with the IP reputation
system (GBUdb) the only result code you might not want to trust at the
same level is the caution result -- but in most cases there is no
meaningful distinction.

 I would say this parameter would have to be a comma-delimited list of
result
 codes that you want to treat as Spam - or, if there is some confidence
 factor that Sniffer uses internally, then that could be translated into
an
 ASSP score...

I'm not sure what is possible with the plugin interface.

The design of the plugin at the moment is a binary decision-- either
the message is spam, or not. There is no way to say how spammy
except to tune the plugin overall.

Based on that limitation we ended up with a threshold.

As a matter of convention, all nonzero SNF results indicate spam.

The exception to this is when we create specialized rules. When we do
this we usually code those rule groups with a symbol value (result
code) at or below 10. For example, system specific white rules are
usually coded to result code 1.

After that there are really only 3 significant levels associated
with SNF result codes.

The caution result (40) _might_ be considered less certain that the
other rules-- though the default tuning for the caution range is very
conservative.

The ordinary result codes for pattern matches are considered reliable.

Finally, a truncate (20) result indicates that the IP reputation is so
bad that there is no need to look at the contents. This result could
be considered more certain than ordinary.

---

With regard to the caution result - that can be tuned using the GBUdb
parameters-- or it can even be turned off. That would leave the
remaining result codes 20 and above which are all considered reliable.

---

In the best world you would be able to translate any SNF result code
to any weight you want but that doesn't seem possible in the ASSP
plugin API.

If it is then please let me know and I'll look into making that
adjustment.

That said though-- even when SNF users have the ability to translate
SNF results individually, in practice they don't. There doesn't seem
to be a need as each nonzero result is a very accurate indicator of
spam.

The one exception that some systems might find is the caution result
and if that proves to be a problem they can turn off that result in
the SNF configuration.

Hope this helps,

Thanks!

_M


-- 
Pete McNeil
Chief Scientist,
Arm Research Labs, LLC.


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