'Announce myself as' configuration

Greenman — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 09:36:00 GMT

Hi folks

I was discussing our mail server setup with a couple of guys who have audited our Windows network. One of the points that came up was that mail servers 'announce' themselves and that this information can be a security concern. They said that you can change this information and 'hide' your Internet name making it more difficult for anyone trying to hack the system.

I was checking out Mercury/32's configuration. When we set it up we followed the advice in the help file and left the 'Announce myself' field blank, as the help file states 'In the majority of cases this field can and should be left blank'.

What I don't quite understand is how this affects the way the mail is delivered. The guys I was talking to said that authentication works on the domain name of the sender address.

So, if I change the 'Announce myself as' field to 'Heritage Services' I assume that the headers will reflect this in the HELO: ? What I don't want to happen is that I change this value and then have mail bounced back to me because of authentication or other errors.

Here are the relevant parts (I hope) from my Mercury.ini file:

[General]
myname: apsarchaeology.co.uk # Canonical name for this server

[MercuryE]
HELO : apsarchaeology.co.uk

[Protocols]
MERCURYS.DLL
MERCURYP.DLL
# MERCURYE.DLL
MERCURYC.DLL
# MERCURYD.DLL
# MERCURYH.DLL
# MERCURYF.DLL
# MERCURYW.DLL
# MERCURYX.DLL
MERCURYI.DLL
MERCURYB.DLL

[Domains]
apsarchaeology: apsarchaeology
apsarchaeology: apsarchaeology.co.uk
lincsheritage: lincsheritage.org
lincsheritage: lincsheritage
heritagelincs: heritagelincs
heritagelincs: heritagelincs.org

MercuryS and MercuryC GUI:
Announce myself as: blank

So, I wonder if anyone has any comments they would like to share on this. I understand the basics of SMTP delivery (thanks, Thomas!), but when it gets into authentication of domains I'm lost. If you want to see more information please ask.

Thanks.

Search Results matching tags 'Mercury' and 'helo'

'Announce myself as' configuration