Killing the Corporate Hydra: Spam E-Mail

II. Eradicating Spam with SpamAssassin
Technology

McAfee SpamKiller products are powered by
SpamAssassin technology, renowned public domain
software that has been commercialized by Deersoft.
McAfee acquired Deersoft in early 2003. The New York
Times Magazine says enthusiastically of SpamAssassin:
“One of the best tools for network administrators is
an ever-evolving program called SpamAssassin,
which uses a range of tests and a point system to
identify spam. This is subtler than simple yes-no
filtering. Messages get points for capitalized words
like AMAZING and GUARANTEE and PROFITS.

They get points for mentioning Viagra—especially
“natural” or “herbal.” They get points for requesting
a credit-card number, for including a toll-free
number and for offering a full refund. They get
points for odd-looking dates: much spam appears
to have been sent in 1941; much appears to have
been sent from the future. They get points for lively
font colors and embedded scripts or links.

In a delightful SpamAssassin irony, a message gets
extra points for declaring that it is not spam. After
all, such statements are invariably lies.”5

Optimized for Corporate Use
The SpamAssassin engine, on which the SpamKiller
product line is based, is indeed open-source code. As
The New York Times Magazine alluded, the program is
“ever-evolving” because it is publicly available on the
Internet and can be modified by anyone who wishes to
do so. The open source version of SpamAssassin is
much more suitable for hobbyists; it runs only on the
UNIX operating system, does not contain any code to
integrate with popular e-mail servers such as Microsoft
Exchange or Microsoft Outlook, nor does it offer the
option of professional technical support.

When Network Associates® acquired Deersoft and the
SpamAssassin trademark, Deersoft’s top spam-filtering
design engineers joined Network Associates to lead
McAfee’s anti-spam research and perfect the
SpamAssassin engine for use in the enterprise. Deersoft
and McAfee have subsequently made numerous
performance enhancements to the SpamAssassin
engine that are not available in the open source version,

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