Title: SpamAssassin Author: Alan Schwartz Pages: 206 Publisher: O'Reilly Rating: 9 Reviewer: Gary Smith, Security SIG Leader ISBN: 0-596-00707-8

Summary: Want to get ride of spam? Get SpamAssassin and get this book.

Joseph Stalin liked SPAM. He credited it as being one of the things that saved the Soviet Union during The Great Patriotic War (what the Russians call World War II). If Joltin' Joe were around today, he wouldn't like spam at all. If he caught you spamming, you'd be getting off lightly if all you got was 20 years hard labor in a Siberian work camp, Actually, that doesn't sound like to bad a punishment for spammers, but I digress.

SpamAssassin is an industrial strength tool for keeping spam out of mailboxes. Given all the many forms that spam can take, it's not surprising that SpamAssassin has many ways to filter the spam out and let the ham (mail that you want) out. Consequently, setting up SpamAssassin can be a non-trivial task. Enter Alan Schwartz's book from O'Reilly on SpamAssassin. The book is a mere 206 pages but is packed as tightly as a can of SPAM with information to set up SpamAssassin. Here is a quick rundown of the chapters:

Chapter 1: What SpamAssassin is and what it does. Chapter 2: Installation, testing, and operation. Chapter 3: Details of configuration, rules, writing rules, blacklists,

    and whitelists.

Chapter 4: How SpamAssassin learns what is spam and what is ham. Chapter 5: How to make a mail gateway with SpamAssassin and sendmail. Chapter 6: How to make a mail gateway with SpamAssassin and Postfix. Chapter 7: How to make a mail gateway with SpamAssassin and qmail. Chapter 8: How to make a mail gateway with Exim. Chapter 9: Using SpamAssassin as proxy to support POP mail clients.

As mentioned, dealing with spam is a complex problem and consequently SpamAssassin is a complex program suite. Mr. Schwartz leads the reader through the complexities of setting up SpamAssassin. Just as spammers use many ways to get their junk into your inbox, SpamAssassin has many ways to keep it out. These are well explained in the book, including how SpamAssassin's Bayesian filtering works and how you can build up a knowledge base from which SpamAssassin can act.

Some things I liked about this book: Many authors would have been content to detail how to set up SpamAssassin and leave it at that. Mr. Schwartz went far beyond the extra mile and devoted four chapters on how to integrate SpamAssassin into the most popular MTA's (Mail Transfer Agents) around today. As an added bonus, Mr Schwartz goes into how to integrate SpamAssassin with POP clients.

Some things I didn't like about this book: Well, it's hard to come up with anything. The book covers SpamAssassin V2.60 and V3.0 so it's got the major versions covered. The book is the right size, 206 packed pages. The writing is clear and the explanations are easy to follow.

Joe Stalin liked SPAM and he'd probably like SpamAssassin too. He'd also like Alan Schwartz's book on SpamAssassin. If spam is overflowing from your inbox, get SpamAssassin and Mr. Scheartz's book and send that spam packing to Siberia.