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The Message Sniffer software is designed to be installed on an email server or filtering appliance. Message Sniffer is driven by a professionally managed rulebase, available via subscription, that is continuously monitored and updated by intelligent machines and highly trained analysts. This teamwork between synthetic intelligence and extraordinary people reduces your administrative workload to a minimum and allows SNF to respond quickly (within minutes) to new threats while also predicting future hazards so they can be blocked before they arrive.

The Message Sniffer software has two components: SNFServer and SNFClient. SNFServer provides message scanning and collaborative IP reputation services (GBUdb) via the XCI protocol. GBUdb responds quickly to emerging threats and saves system resources by providing IP blocking information and modifying message scan results in real-time. SNFClient provides a command line interface to SNFServer via the XCI protocol. The SNFClient utility can be used to connect SNFServer to virtually any email server or filtering system that supports external antispam and antivirus tools.

SNF accurately captures more than 99% of spam without tuning. We calculate this statistic from real-world data collected by our monitoring system using system telemetry, data from spam-traps, user submissions and a comparative analysis with several dozen high quality spam tests.

In addition, Message Sniffer's highly optimized engine has very modest hardware requirements and typically uses only a small fraction of the resources required by other engines. (SNF typically has less than 10% of the CPU requirement of SpamAssassin when processing the same message stream!)

Message Sniffer is used by ISPs, ASPs, SaaS providers, spam filtering services, antispam appliance vendors, schools, businesses, and consultants worldwide to protect systems from spam, scams, viruses, and other email borne threats.

Learn More about what Message Sniffer is and how it works.

We have designed Message Sniffer (SNF) to be a complete anti-spam solution for your email servers. Let us help you reduce the time and effort you spend dealing with spam.

Anti-Spam & Anti-Virus Anti-Malware & Anti-Spyware Anti-Spoofing & Anti-Phishing Automated Tuning Collaborative Learning Multi-Platform No Per User License Fee Free Responsive Support

Fail Safe Design Strategy Low False Postive (FP) Rate Interactive FP Resolution Process High Availability, Continuous Monitoring Highly Adaptive Rulebase System Continuous Automated Updates Works With ANY Email Server Low Use of System Resources

Read more about the Full List of SNF Features.

The *Nix distribution of Message Sniffer includes a complete snaphshot of the source code and a handfull of utilities and plugins that make it relatively easy to run Message Sniffer on virutally any linux/unix style operating system.

The Message Sniffer software is built on the target system with the familiar configure, make, make install process; and the included installation instructions include specifics for RedHat, Ubuntu, Suse, FreeBSD, and OpenBSD operating systems. Be sure you have a suitable C++ development environment installed in order to build the binaries for your platform. (gnu c++ recommended)

This distribution can be customized for use on a wide range of platforms that use command-line scanner functionality such as the included Postfix filter script. SpamAssassin based systems typically use the included SNF4SA plugin.

SNFServer is typically set up as a system daemon running under a restricted userid and then accessed via our XCI protocol via localhost. This is typically done via the SNFClient utility, or via the SNF4SA plugin; however, many ISPs, OEM developers, and filtering service providers prefer to call SNFServer directly via the XCI protocol.

Developers can modify the source code directly to build customized implementations; and if they wish to talk to SNF via XCI then the SNFClient utility can be run in debug mode to demonstrate the XCI protocol in operation. If you chose to modify the source code for your needs you can keep the unmodified parts up to date with the latest snapshots from our SVN server here: https://svn.microneil.com/websvn

This distribution is widely used without modification on postfix based MTAs and similar systems that can use filtering scripts and command line scanners.

The most common implementations use the SNF4SA plugin with SpamAssassin since most linux based MTAs tend to start with SpamAssassin as a component.

If you are interested in using Message Sniffer as a Milter then you should use the SNFMilter distribuion.

Your Message Sniffer subscription comes with free support to help get Message Sniffer installed on your system.

Get *nix Distribution

This product is for use in a *nix environment where SNF will be integrated through scripting (such as a postfix or procmail filter) or as a kind of command line scanning utility. This product is also useful if you will be running SNFServer as a daemon and issuing XCI scan requests.

This *nix distribution includes:

• SNFServer - Source for *nix systems. (SNF Server Application)
• SNFClient - Source for *nix systems. (SNF Client Utility)
• snf2check - Source for *nix systems. (SNF Rulebase Authenticator)
• getRulebase - Bash script for downloading rulebase files (uses curl and snf2check).
• snf-server - Bash script for launching SNFServer as a daemon.
• snfscan-standalone, snfSniffer, snfSnifferFilter - Example filter scripts (postfix, procmail,...)

SNFServer provides a high performance, multi-threaded implementation of the SNFMulti anti-spam engine coupled to a TCP (localhost) server that accepts XCI requests. SNFServer can be run at the command line for testing; it can be launched as a child process as part of a larger filtering system; or it can be run as a daemon using the provided snf-server control script.

SNFClient provides a command line interface to SNFServer by translating command line scan requests to XCI requests and interpreting the result. SNF scan result codes can be retrieved as $? in bash scripts or directly by the calling program. (See included snfSniffer as an example.)

snf2check is a command line utility that tests SNF rulebase files for authenticity and integrity.

getRulebase provides a rulebase update mechanism using the open source utility curl for retreiving rulebase updates. The script is designed for use with SNF's update-script feature to provide up-to-the-minute filtering rules automatically.

snf-server is an example bash script for launching SNFServer as a daemon.

Note: Although this source distribution is most commonly used on *nix systems it is also the exact same source code we use to compile these programs for win* systems using MinGW!