[ On Friday, October 22, 2004 at 10:21:15 (+0300), Stuart Gall wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: [exim] hostname and HELO/EHLO response
>
>
> Yes but read on .............
You really should try to read the list archives before diving into
another debate about this particular issue. :-)
RFC 1123 5.2.5 is well known as being a self-contradictory political
compromise that was made way back twenty years ago in the era of the
academic internet in order to ensure the DNS and SMTP were adopted in
the first place.
Meanwhile it has become widely accepted that RFCs of days gone by have
often over-stepped their boundaries into the realm of recommending
particular specifics of site security policies (especially when those
recommendations have proven to be counter-productive). For example spam
might have been anticipated 20 years ago, but the adverse impact of the
contradictory suggestions and completely unreasonable rationale given in
RFC 1123 5.2.5 was apparently not well anticipated by many people.
Meanwhile it is _most_ important to keep in mind that we're talking
about a document that was written 20 years ago in very different
circumstances.
> I dont believe anyone except a spammer would deliberately forge the
> HELO but many sites have poorly configured servers
> when an important client has a badly configured server no one wants to
> hear from sysadmin that it is their fault :-(((
I would suggest that only a severely mal-adjusted person would react
badly to that kind of news. Most folks do try to learn from their
mistakes and they can only do so if those mistakes are pointed out to
them. :-)
And the sooner we can get all these badly configured servers fixed then
the sooner more sites can be as strict about how their SMTP peers
identify them as, for exmple, my own. :-)
There's nothing like suddenly bouncing all mail from a broken site to
wake them up and get them to take action, and they'll get over their
bruised egos soon enough.
--
Greg A. Woods
+1 416 218-0098 VE3TCP RoboHack <woods@???>
Planix, Inc. <woods@???> Secrets of the Weird <woods@???>
