[PLUG] Open relays for spammers

Richard Langis Jr. richard.langis at sun.com
Fri Jul 26 15:56:24 UTC 2002


When I set up my first linux server - RedHat 5.2 - Sendmail was 
configured, BY DEFAULT, to relay mail from *anywhere*.  Only when I 
recieved a peice of spam that seemed to come from my own box did I 
realize what was wrong and took steps to correct it.

About a year ago, there was someone from Russia asking for linux 
distribution donations here on this list.  Some of the donated 
distributions could have been configured just as mine had been, and as 
someone else mentioned, the howto's are generally written in english, 
not russian.  Perhaps all of the open relays are simply older 
distributions with insecure default mail configurations?

I can easily imagine a newbie doing just this and then forgetting about 
it...  Especially if they have an ISP they use for mail and don't bother 
with the imap/pop services their new server has available for them.

Thankfully, the distribution creators figured this out and fixed it in 
the newer versions.  At least...I HOPE they have.  We can only hope that 
some of these relays eventually upgrade, and the configuration problems 
they had 'go away'.  Of course, that would be in a near-perfect world.  ;)

-R


Jim Adams wrote:

> 
> Also as I mentioned before no where in the documentation did it say
> "Warning: By default this server is open relay, to turn it off do..." 
> This comes back to the original question of "why are there so many open
> relay servers?"  In this case it could be a combination of poor docs and
> slackerish(is that a word) admins.


-- 
s u n  m i c r o s y s t e m s

   ~ Richard Langis Jr. ~
   richard.langis at sun.com





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