SUMMARY: Spam relaying problem

From: Brian Desmond (brian@chimera.psych.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Thu Aug 06 1998 - 22:08:58 CDT


Hi Sun Managers

Many thanks to the following for their suggestions, and in
some cases for generous offers of further help. The original
question is at the end.

        Kun Li <likun@bjaimail.asiainfo.com>
        Claus Assmann <ca@informatik.uni-kiel.de>
        "Sam Nelson" <Sam.Nelson@cs.stir.ac.uk>
        blymn@baea.com.au (Brett Lymn)
        Anna Sotiropoulou <anya@mm.di.uoa.gr>
        Oddbjorn Steffensen <oddbjorn@oddbjorn.bdc.no>
        "Sam Nelson" <Sam.Nelson@cs.stir.ac.uk>
        "Tony Clark" <clark@ram.co.uk>
        Don Lewis <Don.Lewis@tsc.tdk.com>
        Mika Tuupola <tuupola@appelsiini.net>
        David J N Begley <david@avarice.nepean.uws.edu.au>
        Benjamin Cline <benji@hnt.com>
        Chad Rytting <survey@www.slcc.edusol.slcc.edu>
        Chris Spencer <chris@inx.inx.net>
        Daniel Beaudry <Daniel.Beaudry@enter-net.com>
        Dave McFerren <davem@solve.net>
        Charlie Mengler <charliem@anchorchips.com>
        "sasha e." <sage@3Sheep.COM>
        James Ford <jford@tusc.net>
        Sean Harding <sharding@gutenberg.uoregon.edu>
        Mark Henderson <mch@squirrel.com>
        Rick Fincher <rnf@spitfire.tbird.com>
        "Peter L. Wargo" <plw@ncgr.org>
        Bismark Espinoza <bismark@alta.jpl.nasa.gov>
        Swee-Chuan Khoo <sckhoo@asiapac.net>
        Boon Heong <info@penang.csam.com.my>
        Andreas Fenner <Andreas.Fenner@bk.sel.de>
        

Overwhelmingly, the responses indicated that the best course of action
was to upgrade to sendmail 8.9.x which must be built from the sources
as sun doesn't supply this version. Many antispam features of this
version of sendmail are built in by default, and can be further fine
tuned by configuring the .cf file.

Sendmail sources and anti-spam info can be obtained from http://www.sendmail.org

Potential gotchas:

According to Clauss Assmann:
----------------------------------------------------------------
PS: 8.9.1 has a small bug, you need this patch for cf/m4/proto.m4:

*** proto.m4.o1 Thu Jul 23 21:08:45 1998
--- proto.m4 Fri Jul 24 08:48:48 1998
***************
*** 1207,1213 ****
  
  # check for local user (i.e. unqualified address)
  R$* $: <?> $1
! R<?> $+ < @ $+ > $: <REMOTE> $1 < @ $2 >
  # local user is ok
  R<?> $+ $@ OK
  R<$+> $* $: $2
--- 1207,1213 ----
  
  # check for local user (i.e. unqualified address)
  R$* $: <?> $1
! R<?> $* < @ $+ > $* $: <REMOTE> $1 < @ $2 > $3
  # local user is ok
  R<?> $+ $@ OK
  R<$+> $* $: $2

----------------------------------------------------------------

And according to Anna Sotiropoulou:

----------------------------------------------------------------
Be careful:
a. DO NOT build the mail.local part --- Solaris doesn't like it
b. Whenever applying patches DO NOT apply any of the Sun patches
for sendmail, it addresses the Sun sendmail and you will need to
re-install
the sendmail or backout the patch.
c. Check frequently the above mentioned site and get newer versions
when they appear.
----------------------------------------------------------------

Original question:

================================================================
Hi again Sun Managers,

We have an urgent problem at the moment - someone is using our machine
to relay spam.

System is:

SunOS blah.blah.unimelb.edu.au 5.5.1 Generic_103640-08 sun4m sparc
SUNW,SPARCstation-10,SX

Sendmail is:

blah:/etc/mail % telnet localhost 25
Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to localhost.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 blah.blah.unimelb.edu.au Sendmail SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4 ready at Tue, 4
Aug 1998 16:57:58 +1000

My understanding is that this patched version of sendmail (8.6) is
running in a version 5 mode. Does this mean that we can't switch off mail
relaying?

If so - how? We are using subsidiary.cf as our sendmail.cf

Suggested courses of action?

With thanks in advance,

Brian

================================================================

--
Brian Desmond 
Department of Psychology          
University of Melbourne           
Parkville, Victoria 3052
Australia

Email: brian@psych.unimelb.edu.au Phone: +61 3 9344 8156 Fax: +61 3 9347 6618



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Fri Sep 28 2001 - 23:12:45 CDT