Getting Started with EFA-NG#

EFA-NG (Email Filter Appliance - Next Generation) is a modern, enterprise-grade, open-source email security gateway designed to protect email infrastructures against spam, malware, phishing, spoofing, and zero-day vulnerabilities.

Forked and modernized from eFa5, EFA-NG is re-engineered with native support for CentOS Stream 10 (and the Enterprise Linux 10 ecosystem: RHEL 10, AlmaLinux 10, Rocky Linux 10), leveraging native PHP 8.3, Perl 5.38/5.40, ClamAV 1.4+, SpamAssassin 4.0+, MariaDB 10.11+, and strict SELinux security policies.

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Core Architecture#

EFA-NG acts as a transparent or frontline Secure Email Gateway (SEG) positioned between the public Internet and your destination mail servers (such as Microsoft Exchange, Postfix, Zimbra, or cloud mail systems).

bash

Internet (Inbound Mail)
         │
         ▼
[ Postfix MTA (Port 25) ] ── (TLS, Rate-Limiting, DNSBL, SQLgrey)
         │
         ▼
[ MailScanner 5 Engine ] ── Multi-Threaded Parallel Scanning
    ├── [ ClamAV 1.4+ Antivirus ] (Foxhole, SaneSecurity)
    ├── [ SpamAssassin 4.0+ Antispam ] (Bayes, Pyzor, Razor2, DCC)
    └── [ OpenDKIM / OpenDMARC ] (Spoof Prevention)
         │
         ▼
[ MariaDB / MailWatch-NG Web Console ] ── (Quarantine & Analytics)
         │
         ▼
Destination Mail Server (Clean Delivered Mail)

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Key Benefits#

CentOS Stream 10 / EL10 Native: Built from the ground up for the latest Enterprise Linux 10 releases without legacy PHP 7.x dependencies.

Uncompromised Mail Hygiene: Multi-layered defense combining Bayesian analysis, distributed checksum clearinghouses (DCC/Pyzor/Razor), and custom heuristic rule sets.

Modern Quarantine Management: Integrated MailWatch-NG console with automated release tokens, user quarantine digests, and detailed audit trails.

Zero Licensing Costs: Free, 100% open-source under GNU General Public License v3 (GPLv3).

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Acknowledgements & Upstream Project#

EFA-NG is built upon the pioneering work and architecture of the eFa Project (https://efa-project.org).

We extend our deep gratitude to:

eFa Development Team: For creating and maintaining the eFa (Email Filter Appliance) open-source project and community for more than a decade.

MailScanner Community: (https://www.mailscanner.info) For the multi-threaded parallel scanning pipeline.

MailWatch Project: (https://github.com/mailwatch/MailWatch) For the comprehensive web quarantine and monitoring interface.

ClamAV & SpamAssassin Teams: For the foundational anti-malware and heuristic anti-spam engines.

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Community & Official Support#

Need assistance, have questions regarding your email security setup, or want to connect with developers and administrators?

Official Support Channel (Telegram): https://t.me/EFA_NG — Real-time community support, instant updates, and release announcements.

Community Forum: https://forum.efa-ng.space.ua — Discussions, tutorials, configuration recipes, and bug reports.

GitHub Repository: https://github.com/kit400/EFA-NG — Source code, issue tracker, and pull requests.

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Next Steps#

Proceed to Installation Guide to deploy your first EFA-NG gateway node.

Check Configuration Guide for DNS records and wizard setup.