topic Re: .com and .net sometimes blocked as spam? in General Topics

.com and .net sometimes blocked as spam?

networkadmin — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 16:48:40 GMT

Running 3.1.2 and have quite a few instances in our PAN log where for some reason a URL (not noticed a pattern other than the URL preceding the problem URL is typically really damned long and some sort of query/search) is blocked and all that shows on the block page or in the PAN logs is ".com/" or ".net/", the category is typically spam-urls.

What's really weird is that the policy is applicable to all staff/machines yet on some machines this happens, on others it simply doesn't happen.

Any ideas please? It's logged with Vadition but any thoughts appreciated.

Re: .com and .net sometimes blocked as spam?

nrice — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 17:00:39 GMT

Thanks for reporting this. It is a bug, fixed in 3.1.3, which should be available by the end of June.

Re: .com and .net sometimes blocked as spam?

networkadmin — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 17:08:07 GMT

Thanks. Any ideas why the same URL works on some PCs and not others though (one chaps PC he gets blocked using IE, doesn't using Firefox).

Re: .com and .net sometimes blocked as spam?

nrice — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 17:39:39 GMT

From reading the bug, it looks like the Host in the HTTP header is being split into two packets resulting in the .com or.net portion being processed indenpendant of the www.xxxx. The .com etc is then identified as spam. The problem is intermittant and doesn't specify which browsers work/don't work so it will be good to have your examples.