Building a mail application.. some advice appreciated

[Paul Schmehl]

--On Wednesday, April 25, 2007 06:43:34 -0700 David Southwell 
<david at vizion2000.net> wrote:

> Hi
>
> I am looking for some general advice and guidance for selecting software
> components to fulfill a proof of concept test.
>
> I need a mail application with  features requiring that incoming mails,
> which  should comply with a predetermined format, be initially examined
> for  compliance with that format.
>
You're going to have to be a bit more specific.  Are you referring to the 
transport information?  Or the data?  Or both?  It makes a big difference 
how you go about inspecting the email.

If you're referring to transport, then use mail/postfix-policyd-weight.  If 
you're referring to data, then spamassassin or another content-inspector 
would work.  You just need to modify the rules of either (or both) to suit 
your test.

> Each sender (read user) has to be uniquely identified in the database
> system  and a log kept of every mail received.
>
> Sender verification requirements are high and, among other things, the
> output  from attachment processing must provide an input to the
> verification system.  
> Mails that pass verification requirements are to be initially processed
> by the  receiving server and the results of verification transferred to a
> mysql   database.
>
Look at this postfix doc: ADDRESS_VERIFICATION_README

> Subsequently data  has to be extracted from the email, processed and the
> results stored in a mysql database. Processing includes the use of
> scripts to  generate email responses and other functions.
>
Postfix delivers to mysql.  Then you script whatever you want using db 
queries.

> Attachments  have to be extracted and passed for processing and
>  results  stored  in a mysql db.
>
amavisd

> Mails that do not comply with the verification requirements need to be
> passed  to another server for logging and processing.
>
> The system has to be scaleable.
>
To what?  Anything is scalable if you have enough boxes and storage.

-- 
Paul Schmehl (pauls at utdallas.edu)
Senior Information Security Analyst
The University of Texas at Dallas
http://www.utdallas.edu/ir/security/