URL Categorization for Redirected Links in SMG

Products

• Messaging Gateway

Issue/Introduction

When Symantec Messaging Gateway (SMG) scans an email message, it evaluates any URLs included in the message to determine their content category. This categorization is used to apply spam policies based on the URL category.

Environment

SMG configured with customer-specific URL 

Cause

Currently, when SMG analyzes a URL that contains a redirect—such as:

 

https://google.com/url?q=https://example.com

SMG returns only the category of the base (initial) URL.
In the example above, SMG identifies the URL as belonging to the category associated with google.com (e.g., Search Engine), without evaluating the final redirect destination (example.com).

Resolution

A feature request has been raised to enhance SMG’s URL inspection capability.
The upcoming enhancement will allow SMG to:

• Follow and evaluate redirected URLs

• Return the category of both the base URL and the final redirected destination.

This improvement will increase detection accuracy and provide administrators with more complete visibility into links embedded in emails.