[Exim] SMTP Protocol Violation and "Big Brother"

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Author: Mills Mr C P
Date:  
To: 'exim-users@exim.org'
CC: Winter Mr G, Bahia Mr. HS
Subject: [Exim] SMTP Protocol Violation and "Big Brother"
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Hi all.

We are running "Big Brother" (http://bb4.com) version 2.2j to monitor many
services on our network. Since upgrading Exim to 4 this week (from
3.something), we are seeing errors on big brother and in the exim log
similar to the following:

2003-10-09 18:35:22 SMTP protocol violation: synchronization error (input
sent without waiting for greeting): rejected connection from
H=ccsantivirus.resource.rmcs.cranfield.ac.uk [10.4.48.97]

It seems Big Brother connects and does not wait for the banner before it
sends a QUIT which is clearly upsetting Exim. I have read on the Exim lists
that this is a feature designed to block certain types of badly behaved spam
engines. Question is, can this test be disabled for certain hosts somehow? I
agree that it is a useful feature, but it is making our SLA stats look
bad!!!!

Regards

Chris Mills
Cranfield University
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