Review of "Slamming Spam: A Guide for System Adminstrators by Robert Haskins and Dale Nielsen", Addison-Wesley Professional, 2004, $44.99 ISBN: 0131467166

Abstract

First of all, before reading this book, you must realize there is no magic bullet to counteract spam. As the authors point out, "The problem is largely based upon your perspective." One person's spam is another's legitimate mass mailing. Until society-and its laws, regulations, and technology-decides to address the issue, spam will be a fact of life. In this book, the authors set out to advise system administrators on how to combat this adversary. The authors have set up a Web site (http://www.slammingspam.com) with updates, including URLs, errata, and other information. This is to be commended, as the fi ght will be played out on a moving battlefi eld. The book focuses on the server side and has a decided Linux/Unix bias. Readers are not expected to be "Unix geeks," however, since in most cases, step-by-step instructions are given with accompanying explanations. The explanations should also be of interest to those who are not working with Linux/Unix. The book is organized into 12 chapters and seven appendices. Chapter 1 sets the scene and tempo of the work. Chapters 2 through 6 cover Procmail, SpamAssassin, native MTA (message transfer agent) anti-spam features, SMTP issues, and distributed checksum fi ltering. Chapters 7 and 8 discuss Bayesian fi ltering and how this technique is used in the fi ght against spam. Although Chapter 7 provides a good introduction to Bayesian analysis, and is probably suffi cient for this work, a dedicated reader might wish to consult a probability textbook. For those who don't care to understand the theory, the authors kindly grant permission to skip the discussion entirely and focus on the way Bayesian fi ltering applies to the problem. Chapter 8 describes, in turn, three fi ltering packages. Chapters 9 through 11 cover aspects of Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Outlook Express, Microsoft Exchange (including a description of McAfee SpamKiller for Exchange 2.1.1), and Lotus Domino and Lotus Notes. Chapter 12 describes a collection of lesser-known open source products. The appendices provide extra detail;