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Spam: Multiple recipients with 1 legit address and Mercury forwards the lot

Thanks for your reply, David.

 

I confess I am not sure it happened the way I describe, but it was the only thing that made sense to me at the time.  I will investigate the whitelisted senders and see if I can figure out where it all went wrong.

<P>Thanks for your reply, David.</P><P> </P><P>I confess I am not sure it happened the way I describe, but it was the only thing that made sense to me at the time.  I will investigate the whitelisted senders and see if I can figure out where it all went wrong.</P>

I noticed a rather serious problem today:

 

My system's set up to block illegitimate mail.  I demand authentication to relay and I greywall, but today a piece of spam came through with one legitimate address for a local user, and about 12 users on other systems in the CC/BCC fields.  Because one user was legit the message was accepted by Mercury, processed, and 12 messages forwarded to other systems.

 

This strikes me as a rather serious security hole, and I really don't know how to stop it.  Any suggestions?

<P>I noticed a rather serious problem today:</P><P> </P><P>My system's set up to block illegitimate mail.  I demand authentication to relay and I greywall, but today a piece of spam came through with one legitimate address for a local user, and about 12 users on other systems in the CC/BCC fields.  Because one user was legit the message was accepted by Mercury, processed, and 12 messages forwarded to other systems.</P><P> </P><P>This strikes me as a rather serious security hole, and I really don't know how to stop it.  Any suggestions?</P>

[quote user="NFG"]

My system's set up to block illegitimate mail. I demand authentication to relay and I greywall, but today a piece of spam came through with one legitimate address for a local user, and about 12 users on other systems in the CC/BCC fields. Because one user was legit the message was accepted by Mercury, processed, and 12 messages forwarded to other systems.

[/quote]

I don't want to sound like I'm in denial on this, but I don't think it happened the way you describe it. I can't find any way of getting Mercury to do this in testing here - the non-local addresses always return the "We do not relay with RFC2554 authentication" message when I try it, and I've just tried quite a range of possible combinations.

The only scenario that works here is if the sender is actually authenticated, in which case you have an issue of trust with a specific user rather than a technical problem. A variation on the same problem might happen if you have a connection control entry that specifically allows the connecting machine to relay, but once again, that is a configuration issue rather than a security hole.

If you can show me a session log illustrating a clear case of improper relaying, I'll fix it as a matter of urgency, but I'm pretty confident you won't be able to do that.

Cheers!

-- David --

[quote user="NFG"]<p>My system's set up to block illegitimate mail. I demand authentication to relay and I greywall, but today a piece of spam came through with one legitimate address for a local user, and about 12 users on other systems in the CC/BCC fields. Because one user was legit the message was accepted by Mercury, processed, and 12 messages forwarded to other systems. </p><p>[/quote] I don't want to sound like I'm in denial on this, but I don't think it happened the way you describe it. I can't find any way of getting Mercury to do this in testing here - the non-local addresses always return the "We do not relay with RFC2554 authentication" message when I try it, and I've just tried quite a range of possible combinations. The only scenario that works here is if the sender is actually authenticated, in which case you have an issue of trust with a specific user rather than a technical problem. A variation on the same problem might happen if you have a connection control entry that specifically allows the connecting machine to relay, but once again, that is a configuration issue rather than a security hole. If you can show me a session log illustrating a clear case of improper relaying, I'll fix it as a matter of urgency, but I'm pretty confident you won't be able to do that. Cheers! -- David -- </p>
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