For a couple of years one of the companies I look after have had a couple of Barracuda Spam 'firewalls'. I've always been very impressed with the amount of stuff these units block on their own in-house list.
The price tag has always made the prohibitively expensive for smaller users.
Now, however, Barracuda have made their list available under the nick-name 'the barbel'. It's currently free and I have trialed it for just over a week and it's knocking stuff spamhaus are missing out on a count of about 30 to 1 in my logs.
What's the catch? Well I've rung them and it goes like this;
They are happy to let anyone use their RBL as long as they register their server IP's with them for free (truth is they are not enforcing access on IP address at the moment so you can try it without registering). In return for using it, they get lookups upon which they can build trends. So, they help you - you help them. Sweet with me
There was one other catch. I could not get ME Standard to want to use any custom BBL no matter how hard I tried. No matter how you enter it in the custom box, it just refused to bite when I looked in my DNS logs. In the end I hacked it in the registry myself, but you may find it works just on the GUI for you, here is the basics of it:
Under SMTP properties select the [DNS Blacklisting] tab, Enable it by checking the 'Enable DNS Blacklisting' check box if it's not already running. Click the [Add] button and give the BBL a name of your choice, and OK it. Locate the new entry in the list, click 'Enable Selected Blacklist'. In the zone text field add 'b.barracudacentral.org. (DON'T MISS THE LAST FULLSTOP/PERIOD OFF OR IT WON'T WORK). Select the lookup type to be 'A' record and finally add a response such as 'Blocked by the Barracuda Block List' so you can find it in the logs.
Perhaps restart the SMTP service after stopping (but not sure it needs it). If after a reasonable amount of traffic has hit your server you don't see 554 blocks in the SMTP logs, you may need my little registry hack:
Create a text file from this, putting the path to your ME extension in where shown. Save as a .reg file and double-click it and you find it in, ready and working.
Code: Select all
|------START FROM HERE----->
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\<path-to-your>\Mail Enable\Mail Enable\Connectors\SMTP\Reverse DNS Blacklist\BarracudaBBL
"Type"=dword:00000000
"Return Values"=""
"Name Server"="b.barracudacentral.org."
"Record Type"=dword:00000001
"Check Return Values"=dword:00000000
"Name"="BARRACUDA BBL"
"Custom"=dword:00000000
"Status"=dword:00000001
"Response"="554 BLOCKED BY BARRACUDA BRBL - visit www.barracudacentral.org/rbl for information"
"SURBL Status"=dword:00000000
<---- END THERE -----|