How to Troubleshoot Exchange 2007 / 2010 AntiSpam Failures
By Ian Matthews, Up & Running Technologies Inc, February 10, 2010  Last Updated February 11, 2010

 

If you are new to Exchange it can be VERY frustrating trying to find out what happened to a particular email message which you suspect was caught in your spam filter.  This page will help you understand Exchange 2007 / 2010 logging and message tracking.

 

Often, a user will complain that an inbound message was bounced.  The first thing you need to do is confirm that YOUR sever bounced it, so get the user to have the failure message forwarded to an non-exchange address (i.e. @yahoo.com) so you can inspect it.

 

If you see something like:

 

550 5.7.1 Message rejected as spam by Content Filtering.

 

and it says it came from your server, you should read on.

 

The first thing you need to know is that MESSAGE TRACKING (from the Exchange Management Console [EMC] TOOLBOX, does NOT show messages rejected by Exchanges AntiSpam.  Why not?  Ya, that is a really good question.  Fortunately it is still not rocket science to figure out what happened.

 

The ONLY log that Exchange keeps information on AntiSpam messages is the Agent Log, which is located by default in:

 

c:\PROGRAM FILES\MICROSOFT\EXCHANGE SERVER\TRANSPORTROLES\LOGS\AGENTLOG

 

If you look in there and  no information, enable the logging (yes, it is OFF by default):

 

1.       Open the following file by using Notepad:
         C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\Bin\EdgeTransport.exe.config

2.       Modify the following line in the <appSettings> section:
         <add key="AgentLogEnabled" value="TRUE" />

3.       Save and close the EdgeTransport.exe.config file

4.       Restart the Microsoft Exchange Transport service.

Note that Microsoft will NOT tell you exactly what offended the AntiSpam rules because they don't want spammers to figure out their algorythms.  However, once you are recording the events, the Agent Log will provide some useful details. 

 

The first thing you should do is copy one of the agent logs to your PC and open it with EXCEL.  Note that it is a Comma Separated Value (CSV) format even though it is a .LOG file.  Most of the columns are self explanitory, except the last one... which is the important. 

 

I recently had to diagnose what:

 

DV:3.3.8414.660;SID:SenderIDStatus SoftFail

 

translated to, so lets go over it.

 

The first section DV stands for Dat Version.  In other words which update to MS AntiSpam are you using.

 

The next part was more interesting.  A SID status of SoftFail, turns out to mean that the server which sent the email MIGHT NOT be authorized to send mail for the domain in question.  This will increase the SCL (Spam Confidence Level) score and put this message over the edge. 

 

If you are wondering if what you can control in the AgentLog (i.e. how long they are retained, the maximum size...) read THIS easy to understand Microsoft article.

 

For details on "SID" (Sender ID), read THIS short Microsoft document.

 

For a complete description of all the DIAGNOSTIC CODES (i.e. the last field in the Agent Log) use the following table.

 

The following table is taken directly from THIS Microsoft page.

Stamp	Description
SID	The Sender ID (SID) stamp is based on the sender policy framework (SPF) that authorizes the use of domains in e-mail. The SPF is displayed in the message envelope as Received-SPF. The Sender ID evaluation process generates a Sender ID status for the message. This status can be returned as one of the following values: Pass   Both the IP address and Purported Responsible Address (PRA) passed the Sender ID verification check. Neutral   Published Sender ID data is explicitly inconclusive. Soft fail   The IP address for the PRA may be in the not permitted set. Fail   The IP Address is not permitted; no PRA is found in the incoming mail or the sending domain does not exist. None   No published SPF data exists in the sender's DNS. TempError   A temporary DNS failure occurred, such as an unavailable DNS server. PermError   The DNS record is invalid, such as an error in the record format. The Sender ID stamp is displayed as an X-Header in the message envelope as follows: Copy Code X-MS-Exchange-Organization-SenderIdResult:<status> For more information about Sender ID, see Understanding Sender ID.
DV	The DAT version (DV) stamp indicates the version of the spam definition file that was used when scanning the message.
SA	The signature action (SA) stamp indicates that the message was either recovered or deleted because of a signature that was found in the message.
SV	The signature DAT version (SV) stamp indicates the version of the signature file that was used when scanning the message.
PCL	The phishing confidence level (PCL) stamp displays the rating of the message based on its content and is applied when the message is processed by the Content Filter agent. This status can be returned as one of the following values: Neutral   The message's content isn't likely to be phishing. Suspicious   The message's content is likely to be phishing. The PCL value can range from 1 through 8. A PCL rating from 1 through 3 returns a status of Neutral. This means that the message's content isn't likely to be phishing. A PCL rating from 4 through 8 returns a status of Suspicious. This means that the message is likely to be phishing. The values are used to determine what action Outlook takes on messages. Outlook uses the PCL stamp to block the content of suspicious messages. The PCL stamp is displayed as an X-header in the message envelope as follows: Copy Code X-MS-Exchange-Organization-PCL:<status>
SCL	The spam confidence level (SCL) stamp of the message displays the rating of the message based on its content. The Content Filter agent uses Microsoft SmartScreen technology to assess the contents of a message and to assign an SCL rating to each message. The SCL value is from 0 through 9, where 0 is considered less likely to be spam, and 9 is considered more likely to be spam. The actions that Exchange and Outlook take depend on your SCL threshold settings. The SCL stamp is displayed as an X-header in the message envelope as follows: Copy Code X-MS-Exchange-Organization-SCL:<status> For more information about SCL thresholds and actions, see Understanding Spam Confidence Level Threshold.
CW	The custom weight (CW) stamp of a message indicates that the message contains an unapproved word or phrase and that the SCL value, or weight, of that unapproved word or phrase was applied to the final SCL score: Unapproved phrases, or Block phrases, have maximum weight and change the SCL score to 9. Approved words or phrases, or Allow phrases, have minimum weight and change the SCL score to 0. For more information about how to add approved and unapproved words or phrases to the Content Filtering agent, see Configure Content Filtering Properties.
PP	The presolved puzzle (PP) stamp indicates that if a sender's message contains a valid, solved computational postmark, based on Outlook E-mail Postmark validation functionality, it's unlikely that the sender is a malicious sender. In this case, the Content Filter agent would reduce the SCL rating. The Content Filter agent doesn't change the SCL rating if the E-mail Postmark validation feature is enabled and either of the following conditions is true: An inbound message doesn't contain a computational postmark header. The computational postmark header isn't valid. For more information about the postmark validation feature, see Configure Content Filtering Properties.
TIME:TimeBasedFeatures	The TIME stamp indicates that there was a significant time delay between the time that the message was sent and the time that the message was received. The TIME stamp is used to determine the final SCL rating for the message.
MIME:MIMECompliance	The MIME stamp indicates that the e-mail message isn't MIME compliant.
P100:PhishingBlock	The P100 stamp indicates that the message contains a URL that's present in a phishing definition file.
IPOnAllowList	The IPOnAllowList stamp indicates that the sender's IP address is on the IP Allow list. For more information about the IP Allow list, see Understanding Connection Filtering.
MessageSecurityAntispamBypass	The MessageSecurityAntispamBypass stamp indicates that the message wasn't filtered for content and that the sender has been granted permission to bypass the anti-spam filters.
SenderBypassed	The SenderBypassed stamp indicates that the Content Filter agent doesn't process any content filtering for messages that are received from this sender. For more information, see Configure Content Filtering Properties.
AllRecipientsBypassed	The AllRecipientsBypassed stamp indicates that one of the following conditions was met for all recipients listed in the message: The AntispamBypassedEnabled parameter on the recipient's mailbox is set to $true. This is a per-recipient setting that can only be set by an administrator. For more information about this setting, see Set-Mailbox. The message sender is in the recipient's Outlook Safe Senders List. For more information about the Safe Senders List, see Configure Safelist Aggregation. The Content Filter agent doesn't process any content filtering for messages that are sent to this recipient. For more information about recipient exceptions, see Configure Content Filtering Properties.