Protector news

This news track includes information in reverse date order, so that the most recent changes are at the top of the topic..

20-Feb-2003

A lot of work is going on - on the 1.01-beta version. I have switched development over to a RedHat 8.0 system (which oddly lacks some of the binaries I was using - fixed this issue) and have re-written the main parser module from scratch. This latter effort was begun in order to allow the MIME prolgue and epilogue contents to be checked too. Being a re-write from the ground up; this is taking a little time. Also: Lots of feed back from beta testers of 1.01-beta (thanks guys), and enhancements being added to the code all the time. A new 1.01-beta release is still a little way off - but it's getting closer.

27-Nov-2002

version 1.00.8 released. It seems that 1.00.7 doesnt compile under RedHat 8.0 - something has changed in the layout of the standard include files that "blows" the autoconf (etc) logic of "file-3.27". In order to get round this I have had to disable the ELF probing component of "file" (which we dont use anyway) and change the main Makefile to call aclocal etc after exploding the file tarball and patching the sources - not ideal, but it works on all RedHat platforms from 6.2 to 8.0 (so I guess it will work on 6.0 and 6.1 too).

16-Oct-2002

Added a FAQ entry about configuring 1.00.7 to allow MSword and Excel files through without checking them for macros. This is a pretty bad idea, but some people want to do it.

3-Oct-2002

Added a FAQ entry about configuring protector for specific mailboxes rather than the "blanket" configuration that is described in the docs.

3-Oct-2002

The Bugbear virus has hit the netlines over the last few days. Protector 1.00.x and 1.01-betaX both catch it - so that's good!

27-Sept-2002

Thanks to Joseph Gray, we have found an issue with the handling of headers that put the value entirely on a continuation line. This effects both the 1.00 and 1.01 version lines. I have fixed the issue in 1.01-beta12, and have back ported the fixes into a new 1.00.7 release. Announcement of the 1.00.7 change goes out today.

19-Sept-2002

Lots of work on beta11 - I think it's ready to run with. This includes the rebuilding of message/partial messages so we can check them. Also lots more configuration options in protector.conf. We now also handle word perfect and staroffice docs.

10-Sept-2002

After a number of e-mail exchanges with Joseph Gray about issues with 1.01-beta9, a number of these have been fixed and beta10 is now on the website. The errors in beta9 that are fixed include issues with sending from one user to another on the same box that protector runs on, problems with the auto-accepting of zip archives and failure of the preprocess and postprocess hooks. Thanks JG for taking the time to feed back in such detail!

5-Sept-2002

Added "=" to the list of untaintable characters for part_filter.pl - following on from errors recorded during testing of 1.01-beta10.

22-Aug-2002

Added Spanish language translation via google to the web site.

21-Aug-2002

Alejandro Celi has contributed a Spanish translation of the messages files for version 1.00.6 - thanks Alex.

17-Aug-2002

1.01-beta9 is now up on the web site (see: DownloadUnstable), complete with an RPM version for Red Hat 7.3 (which is what I have been developing it on).

8-Aug-2002

Reviewing 1.01-beta9 and found that it is mishandling empty "Status" headers. Corrected the problem. Also working on replacable tokens in the error message text files - so that the message can contain more meaningful descriptions of the issues.

18-July-2002

Released 1.00.6 and placed 1.00.5 into "discontinued" status.

17-July-2002

Finally sorted the bug that has been causing grief to Dirk Shouten - if the file name is held in the Content-disposition header rather than the Content-type, then part_filter doesnt handle it correctly. 1.00.6 solves this problem, and should be released shortly.

10-July-2002

Added a page to the web site on making commonly requested edits to the part_filter. This covers allowing PDFs, TARs and ZIPs - along with warnings about the wisdom of doing so. See PartFilterEdits100.

7-July-2002

Added FAQ answer to the issue of missing "Mprocmail" sections in sendmail.cf.

29-June-2002

Started to add some of the 1.01-beta documents to the web site. This is work in progress, and there are still some of the key ones missing - I will fill the gaps as time allows.

28-June-2002

Added links to view the web site in French, German and Italian - using google's translation engine.

27-June-2002

More 1.01-beta9 work: changed the perl "part_filter.pl" to use perl's "taint mode" for security. Converted many of the HTML documentations files to TWiki format - for easier reading with simple text viewers, and for easier inclusion on this web site. Finished off some of the "messages" files, and caused "removed" and "warning" versions of all of them to be installed.

23-June-2002

Working on the 1.01-beta9 release's new methods of obtaining the "sender" and "recipient" of e-mails. We no longer rely on mail headers, but use envelope information where possible. This requires an additional edit to sendmail.cf. Also: started the FAQ topic on the website.

21-June-2002

Last night's release of 1.01-beta7 proved faulty: There is something wrong with the get_from function in wrapper.c that causes it to blow everytime on bounced mails. Further: we have problems with saving rejected mails (see comments in TODO of beta8) - so took the "get_from" and associated logic out of beta8 and re-installed on trial sites - still got some problems: No mails are getting through at all. Marked beta8 "bad" on DownloadUnstable as well. Ok - now (11.00am) fixed the beta8 problem - so it's available for download again. I still need to fix the "get_from" issues, but this isnt a show stopper.