[OT but please read] ORBS blacklisting ns1.samba.org

[Peter Samuelson]

[David Ford <david at kalifornia.com>]
> Some lists and emails are distributed via ns1.samba.org.  For those
> of you that use ORBS, you'll find it is blacklisted now. There is no
> mention of it on the website and it doesn't return a positive when
> you enter it for testing but it has slipped into the ORBS blacklist
> somewhere.

Check your facts.  ns1 isn't in "the ORBS blacklist" -- it's listed in
a different category.  If you as a mail admin confuse the two it's not
ORBS's fault.  From their web site:

  Spam source and haven netblocks also get listed if our attention is
  repeatedly drawn to them - the easiest way to do this is for those
  netblocks to start filling ORBS spamtraps.  These return a 127.0.0.5
  A RR code.

ns1 is in this category.  Thus it does NOT mean that ns1 is an open
relay -- it means that their upstream contains spamhausen.

So, all you mail admins out there -- check your setups!  If you only
want to reject known open relays, set your MTAs to only look for ORBS
responses of 127.0.0.2 and 127.0.0.3.  127.0.0.4 and 127.0.0.5 mean
*other things*.  If you don't wish to block those other things,
*don't*.  It's a flexible system, and I wish people would stop blaming
ORBS for random mail admin mistakes.

Peter