Re: [Exim] Re: Ho hum... Blackhole Lists...

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Author: Philip Hazel
Date:  
To: Dirk Koopman
CC: Jethro R Binks, exim-users
Subject: Re: [Exim] Re: Ho hum... Blackhole Lists...
On 19 Feb 2002, Dirk Koopman wrote:

> Well on further fiddling I have found out the following:-
>
> 1) The "a@b"@z construct appears NOT to be rejected except by the
> "accident" that a@b isn't a valid local user.


That is not an "accident". It normally IS an invalid local user. But
that is for you to decide - at the mail standards level it is just
another local part which is a bit odd because it contains an @
character.

> If you pass it to a smart
> host it will happily be expanded. z can be ANY local domain whatsoever.


That is the fault/problem of the smart host.

> 2) The way to I have chosen to stop it is as below:-
>
> # this checks for nasty characters in the localpart by only
> # checking that only [A-Za-z_.-] are there.


What is the problem with just rejecting it as an unknown local part?

> There must be some means of not having to do the above. I repeat, I have
> receiver_verify on.


Lots of sites have valid addresses containing characters other than
those you have chosen to allow above. Just look at my own address for a
start. Exim cannot prescribe these things.

However, in Exim 4 you can reject incoming SMTP addresses on this basis
at SMTP time by a suitable configuration. In fact, the default
configuration does do this by default, because so many people have had
problems. Exim 4 (in the default configuration) rejects addresses with
local parts that contain any of @ % ! / or | at RCPT time.

--
Philip Hazel            University of Cambridge Computing Service,
ph10@???      Cambridge, England. Phone: +44 1223 334714.