[TriLUG] Open mail relays?

[Jeff Bollinger]

Check out http://www.abuse.net/relay.html

to see if your system may be vulnerable.  A relay is basically a mail 
server that is left wide open for spammers to route (relay) tons of spam 
through your host in order to hide where their mail is actually coming 
from.  Having an open mail relay will make you some enemies very 
quickly!  ;)

Jeff

Chris Merrill wrote:
> 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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-- 
Jeff Bollinger
University of North Carolina
IT Security Analyst
105 Abernethy Hall
mailto: jeff_bollinger at unc dot edu

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