Open Relay Checker before Opening MTA

[Richard Cottrill]

I'm wondering that you might open yourself to potential legal hassles by
attempting to (even test) if the other server is an open relay. If there
were a suitably motivated lawyer they might construe it as improper use of
facilities or some such thing. I'm also a little worried that if this were
to become a common practice that it might not scale too well. I suppose
you'd really need an awful lot of servers on board before that happened.

Richard

> -----Original Message-----
> From: linux-admin at lists.samba.org [mailto:linux-admin at lists.samba.org]On
> Behalf Of Neil Symons
> Sent: Saturday, February 09, 2002 1:59 PM
> To: linux at lists.samba.org
> Subject: Open Relay Checker before Opening MTA
>
>
>
>
> I wonder if there is already something like this out there before
> I write one myself.
>
>
> When a mail server connect to me, I check my local blacklist to
> see if server is listed as an open relay, if not, then check my
> goodlist, if not there then connect straight back at them and do
> a open relay test.
>
> If all successfull, then accept connection and open real Mail
> Transport Agent (Mail server) and carry on through the e-mail.
> And add them to my Goodlist
>
> If it is found to be open relay, then REJECT e-mail and also
> e-mail postmaster of domain about what happended.
> Add site to local blacklist.
>
> Once per day/week/month go through each blacklist and whitelist
> to check if open relay and adjust accordinly.
>
> Even though this may use up bandwith, it will at least be less
> than the amount of junk mail received these days.
>
>
> Does anyone have any suggestions to whether this is a practical
> thing to do, or simply a stupid thing to do?
>
> Open for FLAME / SUGGESTIONS / POINTERS / DISCUSSION
>
> -- Neil
>
>
> --
> +----------------------------------------------------------+
> > Neil Symons <neil at goldweb.com.au>                        <
> > Goldweb Internet - (02) 62530059 BH  (0500) 528932 AH    <
> > ICQ / UIN: 5255597 |  http://www.goldweb.com.au/~neil/   <
> +----------------------------------------------------------+
>