Could not extract score from <>

[Giles Coochey]

Recently, since about Friday, the incidence of the following has
markedly increased:

Aug  1 11:04:48 gate sm-mta[5348]: i71A4cli005348:
from=<address@hidden>, size=6077, class=0, nrcpts=1,
msgid=<address@hidden>, proto=SMTP, daemon=MTA,
relay=[218.190.26.60]
Aug  1 11:04:48 gate spamd[1934]: connection from localhost [127.0.0.1]
at port 58514
Aug  1 11:04:48 gate spamd[5352]: processing message
<address@hidden> for root:1005.
Aug  1 11:04:50 gate spamass-milter[5349]: Could not extract score from
<>
Aug  1 11:04:50 gate sm-mta[5348]: i71A4cli005348: Milter add: header:
X-Virus-Scanned: clamd / ClamAV version 0.70, clamav-milter version
0.70j
Aug  1 11:04:50 gate sm-mta[5359]: i71A4cli005348:
to=<address@hidden>, delay=00:00:10, xdelay=00:00:00,
mailer=esmtp, pri=36077, relay=sanitized.mirada-solutions.com.
[ip.ip.ip.ip]
, dsn=2.0.0, stat=Sent ( <address@hidden> Queued
mail for delivery)

I am wondering whether spammers are now attempting to exploit a problem
with the software that causes this error to occur and allow their spam
through. I notice that this error _only_ appears to happen when the
message is spam - is it possible that some some malformed message causes
this error?

Or is it Spamd is simply not putting a score in the headers of the mail?
This seems strange, because if I take one of the mails and feed it to
spamassassin on the command line then it marks it as spam. Additionally
there are no error messages from spamd - so it seems more likely that
the feeding of the message to spamd by the milter is failing?

If anyone wants an example email that caused this issue, let me know - I
will have to export it from Outlook though (merging the headers with the
body).

Any help on this would be appreciated... As I say, the frequency of this
problem appears to have my users believe that our spam detection
software has stopped working.

Thanks

Giles Coochey
Senior System Administrator
Mirada Solutions Ltd (a subsidiary of CTI Molecular Imaging Inc.)
Level 1, 23-38 Hythe Bridge Street
Oxford
OX1 2EP, UK
Tel: +44 (0) 1 865 265562
Tel: +1 865 2186701 (USA)
Mob: 44 (0) 7766886904
Fax: 44 (0) 1 865 265501
web: http://www.mirada-solutions.com