Deleting auto-generated spam from the outbound queue

Please let others know how useful this tip is via the rating scale at the end of it. Do you have a useful Exchange or Outlook tip, timesaver or workaround to share? Submit it to our tip contest and you could win a prize.

Picture this: One afternoon, you're bombarded with pleas for help from people who've been trying to send mail all day. You check the outbound SMTP queue and -- to your horror -- find hundreds, if not thousands of identical messages.

Maybe they've been generated by some piece of malware that somehow slipped through your company's defenses, and is now trying to spam the outside world; or maybe one of your users has stupidly tried to e-mail the same 2 MB attachment to a whole slew of SMTP-only users!

The obvious way to deal with this is to stop the SMTP service and flush the queue. But what if there are other messages that legitima

Digg This!     StumbleUpon     Del.icio.us

RELATED CONTENT Exchange Security Tips How file-level antivirus software can harm your Exchange Server Understanding Exchange Server 2007 SP1 mobile security settings Which ActiveSync authentication method is best for your mobile device? Why you should secure Exchange 2007 using administrative policies Microsoft Exchange Server security dos and don'ts Create a journal rule in Exchange 2007 to secure journaling mailboxes How to protect an Exchange journaling mailbox from email spoofing Lock down Microsoft Outlook 2007 to prevent .PST file access Using Exchange Server journaling as an email-archiving solution Use the OWA Admin tool to 'segment' Outlook Web Access 2003 features Antispam Software and Spam Filtering Problems with email spoofing on SBS 2003 Exchange Insider e-zine Securing your Exchange Server 2007 journaling archives Microsoft Exchange Server security dos and don'ts Troubleshooting Microsoft Exchange Server Event ID error 6009 How can I configure Exchange IMF to allow an IP address or DNS? Tool helps identify inbound Exchange Server email flow issues Configure SMTP relay restrictions in Exchange Server 2003 to stop spam Exchange email sent to a domain using SPF authentication is returned Secure Edge Transport servers using the Security Configuration Wizard Antispam Software and Spam Filtering Research Microsoft Exchange Server Performance Exchange Performance Monitor tracks domain controller communication Three Performance Monitors counters to use in Exchange Server 2007 Scheduling multiple Performance Monitor alerts in Exchange Server 2007 Configure Performance Monitor alerts for Exchange Server 2007 Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 performance tutorial Top Exchange Server performance monitoring and troubleshooting tools Three hardware don'ts when optimizing Exchange Server performance Why too much memory can hurt Exchange Server 2007 performance Troubleshooting slow Outlook Web Access (OWA) performance Use Performance Monitor to detect Exchange 2003 message queue problems

RELATED GLOSSARY TERMS Terms from Whatis.com − the technology online dictionary greylist  (SearchExchange.com) hash buster  (SearchExchange.com) image spam  (SearchExchange.com) KnujOn  (SearchExchange.com) Sender ID  (SearchExchange.com) spam confidence level  (SearchExchange.com) spamblock  (SearchExchange.com) spim  (SearchExchange.com) tarpitting  (SearchExchange.com) teergrube  (SearchExchange.com)

RELATED RESOURCES 2020software.com, trial software downloads for accounting software, ERP software, CRM software and business software systems Search Bitpipe.com for the latest white papers and business webcasts Whatis.com, the online computer dictionary

tely need to be delivered?

There is a way to delete only the offending messages -- without using any third-party tools:

Since SMTP-queued messages are plain text, they can be read by being dropped into Notepad or another plain text reader.

Note that some automatic spam uses randomly-generated texts to make them more difficult to filter out. However, if they're trying to propagate by sending an attachment, odds are you should be able to filter by searching for the first dozen or so characters in the encoded version of the attachment.

About the author: Serdar Yegulalp is editor of the Windows Power Users Newsletter.

Reference Center: Spam prevention and management

---

Rate this Tip To rate tips, you must be a member of SearchExchange.com. Register now to start rating these tips. Log in if you are already a member. Submit a Tip DISCLAIMER: Our Tips Exchange is a forum for you to share technical advice and expertise with your peers and to learn from other enterprise IT professionals. TechTarget provides the infrastructure to facilitate this sharing of information. However, we cannot guarantee the accuracy or validity of the material submitted. You agree that your use of the Ask The Expert services and your reliance on any questions, answers, information or other materials received through this Web site is at your own risk.