[TriLUG] Open mail relays?

[Chris Merrill]

Ben Pitzer wrote:
> honest, is pretty good.  However, if someone out there wants to leave
> their mail relay open, well, there's not alot we can do about it right
> away.  Our problem with this mail thing has not been us.  It's been
> uninformed users who either violate their AUP, or else fail to properly
> configure their servers to prevent external abuse.  As an ISP, there's

Ben (or anyone else...),

Would you mind elaborating a little on this point?

What is an 'open mail relay' and how do I detect and/or fix it?

I'm still pretty novice as far as linux admin goes...I have
been running Postfix on my machine (primarily to run a
few low-traffic mailing lists) for about 6 months.  I check
the logs occasionally and don't see any messages to/from
anyone who is not on one of my mailing lists.  Past the basic
installation, I only setup a few mailboxes, admin, me and one
for each mailing list.  My Postfix book seemed to indicate
that Postfix was pretty secure out-of-the-box...but I worry
that I missed (or broke) something.

Chris
(hopefully not contributing to RR's mail problems)

*********************************
Chris Merrill
cmerrill at nc.rr.com
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