All Archives / aussie-isp / 2005-06
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Date: Sat, 11 Jun 2005 21:17:52 +1000 (EST)
From: Craig Ian Dewick
Cc: Oz-ISP
Message-Id: <Pine.GSO.4.58.0506112114350.4937@lios.apana.org.au>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.33.0506111840570.1517-100000@home.albury.net.au>
References: <Pine.BSF.4.33.0506111840570.1517-100000@home.albury.net.au>
Subject: RE: [Oz-ISP] Helo Pacific
No followups recorded.

On Sat, 11 Jun 2005, Ross Wheeler wrote:

>
> On Sat, 11 Jun 2005, David Luyer wrote:
>
> > > WHY would your Mail scanner accept obviously forged email?
>
> > For that part - very few mail servers enforce good data in the
> > HELO/EHLO hostnames - is anyone here doing any kind of check
> > on the HELO/EHLO hostnames?
>
> my deroute script does this in a *limited* way. As was stated in another
> reply, a host who handles mail for many different domains will be
> difficult to treat in this manner, however there are several that
> spammers/phishing/scams often use that CAN be checked.

The key one being dnsix.com which seems to be a last-best-host MX for a
lot of US (and Australian!) ISP and other corporate mail servers.

I can block all email relayed through dnsix.com and stop masses of spam,
but unfortunately it also blocks a lot of legit email too.

> Ones that clearly work like this are:
>   yahoo
>   hotmail
>   msn
>   aol
>   microsoft
>   westpac.com.au
>   citibank.com
>
> Probably thousands of others too, but certainly these ones I *DO* check in
> the helo/ehlo exchange, and if they ain't who they claim to be, they get
> dropped quick smart.

For my own workstation, I block all SMTP connections from any AOL server.
SpamAssassin and Postfix do quite a good job of the others, but that's
assuming the emails are legit and coming from the right place for what is
claimed in the headers.

Regards,

Craig.

--
Craig Dewick (c r a i g @ p o i s o n . l i o s . a p a n a . o r g . a u http://lios.apana.org.au/~craig
APANA Sydney Deputy Regional Co-ordinator. Operator of Jedi (APANA Sydney POP)
Always striving for a secure long-term future in an insecure short-term world
   Have you exported a crypto system today? Do your bit to undermine the NSA.
----
email "unsubscribe aussie-isp" to m a j o r d o m o @ a u s s i e . n e t to be removed.

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