Re: [Exim] HELO syntax check

On Wed, 21 Aug 2002, Philip Hazel wrote:

| I guess I was "being liberal in what I accepted" when I coded Exim so as
| not to require HELO before accepting a message. This was copied from
| Smail, IIRC.

in the pre-spam days :)?



| I propose the following compromise: if HELO/EHLO has been rejected
| because of a syntax error (or indeed, for any reason), then reject all
| subsequent commands (except RSET, HELP, QUIT, NOOP) until a valid
| HELO/EHLO has been received.

Right - that's what I imagined the default behaviour would do anyhow.

Folk who don't want this check probably need to set helo_accept_junk_hosts
as the spec already implies !




| RFC 2821 says "A client SMTP SHOULD start an SMTP session by issuing the
| EHLO command." Note: SHOULD, not MUST.

So we're sunk then. If the spammers are to be allowed to give a rubbish
HELO and then continue, then is there any point in bothering to do ANY
helo checking at all ??

Then again, we're at liberty to refuse anything we wish, so I guess this
becomes a request for a feature ( Philip's first suggestion )

Chris
k