What's New in MDaemon Version 8?
Improved Collaboration Support (MDaemon PRO only)
WorldClient Enhancements
Collaboration support within MDaemon and WorldClient is vastly improved. From within WorldClient you can now easily create appointments, schedule meetings, and work with address books. Recurring appointments are now fully supported, and appointments are more elaborate with many more fields available to describe them. Further, contacts, calendars, and task data are now stored as IMAP folders within each user's root mail directory. Through WorldClient, your users can access these personal folders and control which other users have access to them. All WorldClient themes (especially Lookout) have been modified with new templates that present contact, calendar, and task folders in a more logical and attractive way.
Domain-wide contact, calendar, and task folders can now be created automatically. These are public folders to which all of the domain's users will have access via WorldClient. By default, all of the domain's users can add, edit, and delete items in these folders, but you can easily change these permissions through the options located on the Public Folders tab of the Shared Folders dialog.
Outlook Connector Integration and Improvements
Users can access all of the new collaboration system's features from within WorldClient. However, because the system is completely IMAP/ACL based, with data stored in XML and RFC/TNEF format, this allows seamless integration with Outlook Connector for MDaemon (formerly GroupWare for MDaemon), a separately licensed product also designed by Alt-N Technologies. When you have installed Outlook Connecter for MDaemon, users can then gain access to all of the collaboration features via Microsoft Outlook by installing a small Outlook Connector plug-in, which can be downloaded from within WorldClient or distributed to them via some other means.
MDaemon now contains an Outlook Connector tab in the main interface, which displays all the IMAP interaction between the MDaemon server and Outlook Connector clients. Additionally, new Outlook Connector related logging options have been added to the Logging dialog. You can now maintain a separate log file, which will track all IMAP activity between the server and the Outlook Connector clients, and you can designate whether or not the composite log window should include Outlook Connector activities.
For more on Outlook Connector, visit www.altn.com.
Security Enhancements
DomainKeys
DomainKeys is an email verification system that can be utilized to prevent email address spoofing. Further, because most spam messages contain spoofed addresses, DomainKeys can help greatly in the reduction of spam even though it wasn't specifically designed to be an anti-spam tool. Finally, DomainKeys can also be used to ensure the integrity of incoming messages, or ensure that the message hasn't been tampered with between the time it left the sender's mail server and arrived at yours. In other words, with DomainKeys the receiving server can be sure that the arriving message is from the sender indicated and that no one changed that message in any way.
In order to ensure the validity and integrity of messages, DomainKeys uses a public and private key-pairs system. An encrypted public key is published to the sending server's DNS records and then each outgoing message is signed by the server using the corresponding encrypted private key. For incoming messages, when the receiving server sees that a message has been signed, it will retrieve the public key from the sending server's DNS records and then compare that key with the message's DomainKeys signature to determine its validity. If the incoming message cannot be verified then the receiving server knows it contains a spoofed address or has been tampered with or changed. A failed message can then be rejected, or it can be accepted but have its spam score adjusted.
For more on DomainKeys, visit: http://antispam.yahoo.com/domainkeys.
Improved AntiVirus Integration
MDaemon can now scan incoming messages for viruses during the SMTP session rather than waiting until after the session is concluded. Because each incoming message is scanned before MDaemon officially accepts the message and concludes the session, the sending server is still responsible for it- the message hasn't technically been delivered yet. Thus the message can be rejected outright when a virus is found. Further, because the message was rejected, no further AntiVirus related actions listed on this dialog will be taken. No quarantine or cleaning procedures will be taken, and no notification messages will be sent. This can greatly reduce the number of infected messages and virus notification messages that you and your users receive. This feature can and will slow down the processing rate of the SMTP server.
AntiSpam Enhancements
Improved Spam Filtering Engine
The engine powering MDaemon's Spam Filter has been updated to SpamAssassin 3.0. This new version of SpamAssassin includes many upgrades and improvements. For a complete list of changes see http://www.spamassassin.org.
HashCash "Proof-of-work" Support
HashCash is a "proof of work" system that is both an anti-spam tool and a Denial of Service countermeasure similar to an electronic form of postage. Using the HashCash system MDaemon can mint HashCash stamps, which are in effect "paid for" with CPU processing time rather than actual currency. A HashCash stamp is inserted into an outgoing message's headers and then verified by the recipient's email server and weighed according to the value of the stamp. Stamped messages are more likely to be legitimate and can therefore be passed through the receiving server's anti-spam systems.
Use of HashCash stamps can help to reduce false positives and prevent messages from being erroneously rejected due to their failing to pass a word-filter or blacklist system.
For more information on HashCash visit http://www.hashcash.org/.
Support for WebAdmin 3.1
MDaemon no longer supports versions of WebAdmin prior to 3.1. You can obtain the latest version of WebAdmin free of charge from: http://www.altn.com/WebAdmin/.
Improved Queue Management
MDaemon's main interface now contains a basic queue management system. This mimics some of the Queue and Statistics Manager functionality but in a more integrated fashion. Double clicking a queue in the stats pane will now switch the main pane to this new queue management system rather than open the Queue and Statistics Manager. However, you can still right-click a queue and view it using the Queue and Statistics Manager if you choose to do so.
Improved Error Management
MDaemon now includes the Holding Queue. This new queue can be used to receive messages that cause software exceptions during AntiVirus, AntiSpam, or Content Filter processing. If a software error occurs when processing a message it will be moved into the holding queue and not delivered.
Messages placed into the holding queue will stay there until the administrator takes some action to remove them. There is a Process holding queue button on the main user interface and an identical option on the Queues menu. You can also process the messages by right-clicking the holding queue on the main interface and then selecting "Re-Queue" from the right-click menu. Processing the holding queue will move all of its messages into either the remote or local queues for normal mail processing. If the error that caused a message to be placed into the holding queue still exists then that message will be placed back into the holding queue when the error reoccurs. If you want to attempt to deliver the holding queue's messages regardless of any error which might occur, then you can do so by right-clicking the holding queue on the main interface and then selecting "Release" from the right-click menu. When releasing messages from the holding queue a confirmation box will open to remind you that the messages could contain viruses or otherwise not be able to filter properly through the Content Filter, AntiSpam and/or AntiVirus engines.
Improved LDAP Queries for Gateway User Verification
When using LDAP queries to verify Domain Gateway users, you can now specify multiple LDAP configurations for your gateway domains. To specify extra sets of LDAP parameters, setup your first set normally and then manually edit the GATEWAYS.DAT file using notepad.
Your new set of parameters should be created using the following format:
LDAPHost1=<host name> LDAPPort1=<port>
LDAPBaseEntry1=<base entry DN>
LDAPRootDN1=<root DN>
LDAPObjectClass1=MDaemonContact
LDAPRootPass1=<password>
LDAPMailAttribute1=mail
For each new set of parameters, increase the numeral in each parameter's name by 1. For example, in the sample set above, each parameter's name ends with "1". To create an additional set each name would end with "2". In another set, each would end "3", and so on.
When the LDAP queries take place, MDaemon will perform multiple LDAP queries in sequence to find a match. If an error or a match is found no further checks are performed.
Custom Plug-in Support
MDaemon now includes a system for integrating custom plug-ins. With an MDaemon plug-in it is possible for a custom application to be integrated directly into the MDaemon GUI and embedded into MDaemon's message processing chain. Your application will appear as a part of the MDaemon interface, and it can process messages without any chance of doing so in a way that might cause problems for MDaemon. See \Docs\Api\Plugins.txt for more details on MDaemon plug-ins.
Additional Features and Changes
See the Relnotes.txt file located in MDaemon's \Docs\ subfolder for a complete list of all new features, changes, and fixes to MDaemon from the previous version.
