[ On Wednesday, November 12, 2003 at 14:23:52 (+0000), Alan J. Flavell wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: [Exim] forged HELO/EHLO addresses
>
> Btw., observant readers will have noticed that our recipe doesn't
> accept the "[ipaddress]" notation, even though it's technically legal.
> IMHO that's an obsolete usage
How can you possibly consider the only valid alternative to working DNS
to be "obsolete"? Surely you don't consider the DNS to be so universal
and foolproof, even at your own site, that you're willing to give up on
the one last resort anyone has of contacting you by way of SMTP when the
DNS fails!
> and we've never seen a bona fide MTA
> using it when offering is mail, although we've seen quite a proportion
> of attempts that could be seen to be spam.
While the fingers of many a postmaster who might type such a notation
during a manual SMTP transaction might not be considered "bona fide
MTAs", such a distinction seems highly counter-productive, especially
when it comes to trying to resolve problems!
I.e. your attitude on this matter really does a disservice to the rest
of the Internet community.
> On the other hand, something like "HELO 11.22.33.44" would slip past
> the above recipe unchallenged.
You should think about fixing that -- a good chunk of spam I see which
gets past many other checks is sent that way.
--
Greg A. Woods
+1 416 218-0098 VE3TCP RoboHack <woods@???>
Planix, Inc. <woods@???> Secrets of the Weird <woods@???>
