Open Relay Checker before Opening MTA

[Howard Lowndes]

It founds neat, but I agree about the scaleability issue.

I think from the legal aspect you could reasonably argue that you are only
taking reasonable steps to secure your own facilities from abuse.

I'd be interested to know how you go.

On Sat, 9 Feb 2002, Richard Cottrill wrote:

> 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/   <
> > +----------------------------------------------------------+
> >
>
>

-- 
Howard.
LANNet Computing Associates - Your Linux people
Contact detail at http://www.lannetlinux.com
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