Will GWAVA Work With the zen.spamhaus.org RBL List?

Will GWAVA work with the zen.spamhaus.org RBL list?

Due to the inclusion of PBL to the zen.spamhaus.org RBL list there are some problems running several configurations of GWAVA with it.  The issue lies in the 'deep parsing' caution given at http://www.spamhaus.org/ZEN/:

"Caution: Because ZEN includes the XBL and PBL lists, do not use ZEN on smarthosts or SMTP AUTH outbound servers for your own customers (or you risk blocking your own customers). Do not use ZEN in filters that do any ‘deep parsing’ of Received headers, or for other than checking IP addresses that hand off to your mailservers."

The GWIA, MTA, PO scanners will parse the entire header when they are using their default configuration, and using these scanners in their default configurations with the ZEN list will yield false positives.  Using the SMTP scanner with RBL connection drop enabled will work with zen.spamhaus.org. 

However, there is a configuration change that will fix the issue.  In the GWAVA RBL settings, select ' Limit received header lines scanned' to one line as shown:


Note: The actual line scanned is dependent on your email setup.  For example if you have a relay in front of your mail server, you will want to scan line number 2, or wherever your GWIA places the source IP address of the email.  Keep this in mind when configuring this setting.

Using this configuration will allow you to use the Zen list.

This article was originally published in the GWAVA knowledgebase as article ID 1337.