SpamAssassin 2010 Bug Blocked New Year’s E-mails
If you sent an e-mail in the first few hours of 2010, there’s a possibility that your recipient has not received your e-mail because of the bug hidden in the open source SpamAssassin used by internet service providers (ISP). The rule used to score emails as possibility of being spam was not updated in compiled versions of Apache SpamAssassin 3.2.0 thru 3.2.5.
SpamAssassin is a computer program used for e-mail spam filtering based on content-matching rules. Mike Cardwell found out that a rule named ‘FH_DATE_PAST_20XX’ triggered the program to give a high spam scores to any e-mail, legitimate or not, that has arrived within its header a date beyond a defined point in the future. He searched for the rule in Google and found out that the said issue, #5852, was first identified in November 5, 2008 and was already fixed in June 30, 2009. He is using Debian for his operating system which doesn’t contain the fix needed for that problem.
The rule ‘FH_DATE_PAST_20XX’ was not updated in compiled versions of Apache SpamAssassin 3.2.0 thru 3.2.5 before the New Year started. So any e-mails sent between 2010 and 2099 will automatically have high spam scores. Even though this problem has not directly stopped e-mail, the number of the legitimate e-mails mistakenly marked as spam would have been raised until the service providers detect the problem.
We’ll never know how many e-mails were affected by bug. According to reports, false positives appeared in Sweden, Germany, and The Netherlands. Daniel Axster of CronLab, an open source anti-spam company from Sweden, stated that it would have affected worldwide if it crossed the date line since almost all ISPs use the standard rule set with some modifications.
Axster advised the providers that they should do regular updates for the filters and archive spam monthly or in case of problems. They should also propose a mechanism to end users that will check their filtered emails for false positives. CronLab usually follow these techniques. Customers should store those emails suspected as spam so that the ISP can analyze about it.
SpamAssassin quickly fix the problem and offered a help page on its website as soon as they discover the problem. If you feel that you might have been affected with this bug but doesn’t know how to check it, you just have to press the resend button to send your email again.
How Can Techie Now Help?
The SpamAssassin 2010 bug blocked the emails enabling for other users not to receive emails sent to them. ISP should update their filters regularly. It’s the same as users updating security software for their computers for protection. If you are looking for PC support services like virus and spyware removal, performance optimization, installation and configuration and general repair, Techie Now is here to help you.