MailScanner

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MailScanner

Developed by	Julian Field
Latest release	4.66.5-3 / January 4, 2008
OS	Cross-platform
Genre	Mail filter
License	GPL
Website	www.mailscanner.info

Free software Portal

MailScanner is an open source e-mail security system for use on Unix e-mail gateways, first released in 2001. It protects against viruses and spam. It is distributed under the GNU General Public License.

The author, Julian Field, won the 2004 Open Source Award from UKUUG for the product [1].

World-wide, the software is estimated by the author to be processing over five billion e-mails per week, with over 1,000,000 downloads. ISPs and mobile telephone networks are included in this list of users.

More recently, anti-phishing measures have been introduced. The software spots attempts at obfuscating URLs (for example, to lure the user into thinking they are signing into their bank, when in reality they are using an imposter web site) and modifies the e-mail with a suitable warning.

[edit] Technology

MailScanner is implemented in around 50,000 lines of Perl. It hooks into other software packages in order to fulfill its duties:

E-mail server (MTA) (e.g. sendmail).
Anti-virus software (e.g. ClamAV - over twenty different products are supported).
Anti-spam software (SpamAssassin).

As with any complex software platform, performance results can vary wildly depending on a wide variety of factors. That said, anecdotal evidence suggests that a quad Xeon PC with 2 GB of RAM and 15 kRPM SCSI disks can process something in the area of 2.2 million messages per day. [2]