PDF Spam and GFI Mailessentials

As you may have noticed the spammers are now sending out blank emails with PDF attachments containing spam.   I really do hate these people…  I do wonder if email will ever be spam free.  Let’s hope so.

Anyway…   GFI have not, as of yet, released an update to GFI MailEssentials to help combat this spam problem, but I am told that it is top priority for them at the moment so expect a patch soon!

In the mean time, make sure that your DNS blacklists are up to date and enabled as this helps a lot to block these nasties.

  7 Replies to “PDF Spam and GFI Mailessentials”

  1. Robert
    July 10, 2007 at 11:48 am

    Any idea of TarpitTime works with GFI MailEssentials? 98% of my incoming is DHA and I’d like to figure out someway fight back.

  2. July 11, 2007 at 7:38 am

    Hi Robert….

    From GFI for you

    “At the moment we do not have any Tar pitting features for DHA attacks, but the Directory Harvesting add-on is able to delete such emails as they are scanned by MailEssentials (at SMTP level). This is done by setting the action to ‘Delete’ in the Directory Harvesting Module –> Properties –> Actions

    This has been added as a feature request however.”

    Hope this helps 🙂

    Nick

  3. July 12, 2007 at 5:34 pm

    Just to let you all know that GFI have just released an updated version of Mailessentials to combat this.

    Nick

  4. Garren
    July 27, 2007 at 5:04 am

    Having spoken with GFI they have suggested the following blacklist servers to be used:
    1. list.dsbl.org
    2. bl.spamcop.net
    3. l2.apews.dnsbl.uceprotect.net (has to be added manually)

    In that order.

    Apparently they should help prevent the ecard spams also.

    Hope this helps.

  5. Garren
    July 30, 2007 at 4:09 am

    Just an update…
    Before I used the above DNSBL I used to get typically 10-15 ecard emails a day.

    I now get none!

    Garren

  6. July 30, 2007 at 4:55 am

    Thanks Garren 😉

  7. Sarah
    August 16, 2007 at 7:44 am

    Furthermore GFI have also recently released a white paper on ‘Attachment Spam’ which explains how spammers have switched from image spam to using PDF, Excel and ZIP file attachments. The paper is a complteley free download: http://www.gfi.com/whitepapers/attachment-spam.pdf

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