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Spam Filtering for Mail Exchangers
How to reject junk mail in incoming SMTP transactions.
Tor Slettnes
<tor@slett.net>
Edited by
Joost De Cock
Devdas Bhagat
Tom Wright
Version 1.0 -- Release Edition
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Table of Contents
Introduction
1. Purpose of this Document
2. Audience
3. New versions of this document
4. Revision History
5. Credits
6. Feedback
7. Translations
8. Copyright information
9. What do you need?
10. Conventions used in this document
11. Organization of this document
1. Background
1.1. Why Filter Mail During the SMTP Transaction?
1.2. The Good, The Bad, The Ugly
1.3. The SMTP Transaction
2. Techniques
2.1. SMTP Transaction Delays
2.2. DNS Checks
2.3. SMTP checks
2.4. Greylisting
2.5. Sender Authorization Schemes
2.6. Message data checks
2.7. Blocking Collateral Spam
3. Considerations
3.1. Multiple Incoming Mail Exchangers
3.2. Blocking Access to Other SMTP Servers
3.3. Forwarded Mail
3.4. User Settings and Data
4. Questions & Answers
A. Exim Implementation
A.1. Prerequisites
A.2. The Exim Configuration File
A.3. Options and Settings
A.4. Building the ACLs - First Pass
A.5. Adding SMTP transaction delays
A.6. Adding Greylisting Support
A.7. Adding SPF Checks
A.8. Adding MIME and Filetype Checks
A.9. Adding Anti-Virus Software
A.10. Adding SpamAssassin
A.11. Adding Envelope Sender Signatures
A.12. Accept Bounces Only for Real Users
A.13. Exempting Forwarded Mail
A.14. Final ACLs
Glossary
B. GNU General Public License
B.1. Preamble
B.2. TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION
B.3. How to Apply These Terms to Your New Programs
List of Tables
1. Typographic and usage conventions
1-1. Simple SMTP dialogue
A-1. Use of ACL connection/message variables
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Introduction
1. Purpose of this Document
This document discusses various highly effective and low impact ways to
weed out spam and malware during incoming SMTP transactions in a mail
exchanger (MX host), with an added emphasis on eliminating so-called
Collateral Spam.
The discussions are conceptual in nature, but a sample implementation is
provided using the Exim MTA and other specific software tools. Miscellaneous
other bigotry is expressed throughout.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2. Audience
The intended audience is mail system administrators, who are already
familiar with such acronyms as SMTP, MTA/MDA/MUA, DNS/rDNS, and MX records.
If you are an end user who is looking for a spam filtering solution for your
mail reader (such as Evolution, Thunderbird, Mail.app or Outlook Express),
this document is not for you; but you may wish to point the mail system
administrator for your domain (company, school, ISP...) to its existence.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3. New versions of this document
The newest version of this document can be found at [http://slett.net/
spam-filtering-for-mx/] http://slett.net/spam-filtering-for-mx/. Please check
back periodically for corrections and additions.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
4. Revision History
Revision History
Revision 1.0 2004-09-08 Revised by: TS
First public release.
Revision 0.18 2004-09-07 Revised by: TS
Incorporated second language review from Tom Wright.
Revision 0.17 2004-09-06 Revised by: TS
Incorporated language review from Tom Wright.
Revision 0.16 2004-08-13 Revised by: TS
Incorporated third round of changes from Devdas Bhagat.
Revision 0.15 2004-08-04 Revised by: TS
Incorporated second round of changes from technical review by Devdas Bhagat.
Revision 0.14 2004-08-01 Revised by: TS
Incorporated technical review comments/corrections from Devdas Bhagat.
Revision 0.13 2004-08-01 Revised by: TS
Incorporated technical review from Joost De Cock.
Revision 0.12 2004-07-27 Revised by: TS
Replaced "A Note on Controversies" with a more opinionated "The Good, The
Bad, the Ugly" section. Also rewrote text on DNS blocklists. Some corrections
from Seymour J. Metz.
Revision 0.11 2004-07-19 Revised by: TS
Incorporated comments from Rick Stewart on RMX++. Swapped order of
"Techniques" and "Considerations". Minor typographic fixes in Exim
implementation.
Revision 0.10 2004-07-16 Revised by: TS
Added <?dbhtml..?> tags to control generated HTML filenames - should prevent
broken links from google etc. Swapped order of "Forwarded Mail" and "User
Settings". Correction from Tony Finch on Bayesian filters; commented out
check for Subject:, Date:, and Message-ID: headers per Johannes Berg;
processing time subtracted from SMTP delays per suggestion from Alan Flavell.
Revision 0.09 2004-07-13 Revised by: TS
Elaborated on problems with envelope sender signatures and mailing list
servers, and a scheme to make such signatures optional per host/domain for
each user. Moved "Considerations" section out as a separate chapter; added
subsections "Blocking Access to other SMTP Server", "User Settings" and
"Forwarded Mail". Incorporated Matthew Byng-Maddick's comments on the
mechanism used to generate these signatures, Chris Edwards' comments on
sender callout verification, and Hadmut Danisch's comments on RMX++ and other
topics. Changed license terms (GPL instead of GFDL).
Revision 0.08 2004-07-09 Revised by: TS
Additional work on Exim implementation: Added section on per-user settings
and data for SpamAssassin per suggestion from Tollef Fog Heen. Added SPF
checks via Exiscan-ACL. Corrections from Sam Michaels.
Revision 0.07 2004-07-08 Revised by: TS
Made corrections to the Exim Envelope Sender Signatures examples, and added
support for users to "opt in" to this feature, per suggestion from Christian
Balzer.
Revision 0.06 2004-07-08 Revised by: TS
Incorporated Exim/MySQL greylisting implementation and various corrections
from Johannes Berg. Moved "Sender Authorization Schemes" up two levels to
become a top-level section in the Techniques chapter. Added greylisting for
NULL empty envelope senders after DATA. Added SpamAssassin configuration to
match Exim examples. Incorporated corrections from Dominik Ruff, Mark
Valites, "Andrew" at Supernews.
Revision 0.05 2004-07-07 Revised by: TS
Eliminated the (empty) Sendmail implementation for now, to move ahead with
the final review process.
Revision 0.04 2004-07-06 Revised by: TS
Reorganized layout a little: Combined "SMTP-Time Filtering", "Introduction to
SMTP", and "Considerations" into a single "Background" chapter. Split the
previous "Building ACLs" section in the Exim implementation into top-level
sections. Added alternate sender authorization schemes to SPF: Microsoft
Caller-ID for E-Mail and RMX++. Incorporated comments from Ken Raeburn.
Revision 0.03 2004-07-02 Revised by: TS
Added discussion on Multiple Incoming Mail Exchangers; minor corrections
related to Sender Callout Verification.
Revision 0.02 2004-06-30 Revised by: TS
Added Exim implementation as an appendix
Revision 0.01 2004-06-16 Revised by: TS
Initial draft.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
5. Credits
A number of people have provided feedback, corrections, and contributions,
as indicated in the Revision History. Thank you!
The following are some of the people and groups that have provided tools
and ideas to this document, in no particular order:
  *  Evan Harris <eharris (at) puremagic.com>, who conceived and wrote a
white paper on greylisting.
  *  Axel Zinser <fifi (at) hiss.org>, who apparently conceived of
teergrubing.
  *  The developers of [http://spf.pobox.com/] SPF, [http://www.danisch.de/
work/security/antispam.html] RMX++, and other Sender Authorization
Schemes.
  *  The creators and maintainers of distributed, collaborative junk mail
signature repositories, such as [http://rhyolite.com/anti-spam/dcc/] DCC,
[http://razor.sf.net/] Razor, and [http://pyzor.sf.net/] Pyzor.
  *  The creators and maintainers of various DNS blocklists and whitelists,
such as [http://www.spamcop.net/] SpamCop, [http://www.spamhaus.org/]
SpamHaus, [http://www.sorbs.net/] SORBS, [http://cbl.abuseat.org/] CBL,
and [http://moensted.dk/spam/] many others.
  *  The [http://www.spamassassin.org/full/3.0.x/dist/CREDITS] developers of
[http://www.spamassassin.org/] SpamAssassin, who have taken giant leaps
forward in developing and integrating various spam filtering techniques
into a sophisticated heuristics-based tool.
  *  Tim Jackson <tim (at) timj.co.uk> collated and maintains a list of
bogus virus warnings for use with SpamAssassin.
  *  A lot of smart people who developed the excellent Exim MTA, including:
Philip Hazel <ph10 (at) cus.cam.ac.uk>, the maintainer; Tom Kistner <tom
(at) duncanthrax.net>, who wrote the Exiscan-ACL patch for SMTP-time
content checks; Andreas Metzler <ametzler (at) debian.org>, who did a
really good job of building the Exim 4 Debian packages.
  *  Many, many others who contributed ideas, software, and other techniques
to counter the spam epidemic.
  *  You, for reading this document and your interest in reclaiming e-mail
as a useful communication tool
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
6. Feedback
I would love to hear of your experiences with the techniques outlined in
this document, and of any other comments, questions, suggestions, and/or
contributions you may have. Please send me an e-mail at: <tor@slett.net>.
If you are able to provide implementations for other Mail Transport Agents,
such as Sendmail or Postfix, please let me know.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
7. Translations
No translations exist yet. If you would like to create one, please let me
know.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
8. Copyright information
Copyright © 2004 Tor Slettnes.
This document is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free
Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any
later version.
This document is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more
details. A copy of the license is included in Appendix B.
Read The GNU Manifesto if you want to know why this license was chosen for
this book.
The logos, trademarks and symbols used in this book are the properties of
their respective owners.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
9. What do you need?
The techniques described in this document predicate system access to the
inbound Mail Exchanger(s) for the internet domain where you receive e-mail.
Essentially, you need to be able to install software and/or modify the
configuration files for the Mail Transport Agent on that system.
Although the discussions in this document are conceptual in nature and can
be incorporated into a number of different MTAs, a sample Exim 4
implementation is provided. This implementation, in turn, incorporates other
software tools, such as [http://www.spamassassin.org/] SpamAssassin. See
Appendix A for details.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
10. Conventions used in this document
The following typographic and usage conventions occur in this text:
Table 1. Typographic and usage conventions
+-------------------------+-------------------------------------------------+
|Text type |Meaning |
+-------------------------+-------------------------------------------------+
|"Quoted text" |Quotes from people, quoted computer output. |
+-------------------------+-------------------------------------------------+
|terminal view |Literal computer input and output captured from |
| |the terminal, usually rendered with a light grey |
| |background. |
+-------------------------+-------------------------------------------------+
|command |Name of a command that can be entered on the |
| |command line. |
+-------------------------+-------------------------------------------------+
|VARIABLE |Name of a variable or pointer to content of a |
| |variable, as in $VARNAME. |
+-------------------------+-------------------------------------------------+
|option |Option to a command, as in "the -a option to the |
| |ls command". |
+-------------------------+-------------------------------------------------+
|argument |Argument to a command, as in "read man ls ". |
+-------------------------+-------------------------------------------------+
|command options arguments|Command synopsis or general usage, on a separated|
| |line. |
+-------------------------+-------------------------------------------------+
|filename |Name of a file or directory, for example "Change |
| |to the /usr/bin directory." |
+-------------------------+-------------------------------------------------+
|Key |Keys to hit on the keyboard, such as "type Q to |
| |quit". |
+-------------------------+-------------------------------------------------+
|Button |Graphical button to click, like the OK button. |
+-------------------------+-------------------------------------------------+
|Menu->Choice |Choice to select from a graphical menu, for |
| |instance: "Select Help->About Mozilla in your |
| |browser." |
+-------------------------+-------------------------------------------------+
|Terminology |Important term or concept: "The Linux kernel is |
| |the heart of the system." |
+-------------------------+-------------------------------------------------+
|See Glossary |link to related subject within this guide. |
+-------------------------+-------------------------------------------------+
|[http://slett.net/gallery|Clickable link to an external web resource. |
|/2003-05/IMG_1655] The | |
|author | |
+-------------------------+-------------------------------------------------+
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
11. Organization of this document
This document is organized into the following chapters:
Background
General introduction to SMTP time filtering, and to SMTP.
Techniques
Various ways to block junk mail in an SMTP transaction.
Considerations
Issues that pertain to transaction time filtering.
Questions & Answers
My attempt at anticipating your questions, and then answering them.
A sample Exim implementation is provided in Appendix A.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chapter 1. Background
Here we cover the advantages of filtering mail during an incoming SMTP
transaction, rather than following the more conventional approach of
offloading this task to the mail routing and delivery stage. We also
provide a brief introduction to the SMTP transaction.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
1.1. Why Filter Mail During the SMTP Transaction?
1.1.1. Status Quo
If you receive spam, raise your hands. Keep them up.
If you receive computer virii or other malware, raise your hands too.
If you receive bogus Delivery Status Notifications (DSNs), such as "Message
Undeliverable", "Virus found", "Please confirm delivery", etc, related to
messages you never sent, raise your hands as well. This is known as
Collateral Spam.
This last form is particularly troublesome, because it is harder to weed
out than "standard" spam or malware, and because such messages can be quite
confusing to recipients who do not possess godly skills in parsing message
headers. In the case of virus warnings, this often causes unnecessary concern
on the recipient's end; more generally, a common tendency will be to ignore
all such messages, thereby missing out on legitimate DSNs.
Finally, I want those of you who have lost legitimate mail into a big black
hole - due to misclassification by spam or virus scanners - to lift your
feet.
If you were standing before and are still standing, I suggest that you may
not be fully aware of what is happening to your mail. If you have been doing
any type of spam filtering, even by manually moving mails to the trash can in
your mail reader, let alone by experimenting with primitive filtering
techniques such as DNS blacklists (SpamHaus, SPEWS, SORBS...), chances are
that you have lost some valid mail.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
1.1.2. The Cause
Spam, just like many other artifacts of greed, is a social disease. Call it
affluenza, or whatever you like; lower life forms seek to destroy a larger
ecosystem, and if successful, will actually end up ruining their own habitat
in the end.
Larger social issues and philosophy aside: You - the mail system
administrator - face the very concrete and real life dilemma of finding a way
to deal with all this junk.
As it turns out, there are some limitations with the conventional way that
mail is being processed and delegated by the various components of mail
transport and delivery software. In a traditional setup, one or more Mail
Exchanger(s) accept most or all incoming mail deliveries to addresses within
a domain. Often, they then forward the mail to one or more internal machines
for further processing, and/or delivery to the user's mailboxes. If any of
these servers discovers that it is unable to perform the requested delivery
or function, it generates and returns a DSN back to the sender address in the
original mail.
As organizations started deploying spam and virus scanners, they often
found that the path of least resistance was to work these into the message
delivery path, as mail is transferred from the incoming Mail Exchanger(s) to
internal delivery hosts and/or software. For instance, a common way filter
out spam is by routing the mail through SpamAssassin or other software before
it is delivered to a user's mailbox, and/or rely on spam filtering
capabilities in the user's Mail User Agent.
Options for dealing with mail that is classified as spam or virus at this
point are limited:
  *  You can return a Delivery Status Notification back to the sender. The
problem is that nearly all spam and e-mail borne virii are delivered with
faked sender addresses. If you return this mail, it will invariably go to
innocent third parties -- perhaps warning a grandmother in Sweden, who
uses Mac OS X and does not know much about computers, that she is
infected by the Blaster worm. In other words, you will be generating
Collateral Spam.
  *  You can drop the message into the bit bucket, without sending any
notification back to the sender. This is an even bigger problem in the
case of False Positives, because neither the sender nor the receiver will
ever know what happened to the message (or in the receiver's case, that
it ever existed).
  *  Depending on how your users access their mail (for instance, if they
access it via the IMAP protocol or use a web-based mail reader, but not
if they retreive it over POP-3), you may be able to file it into a
separate junk folder for them -- perhaps as an option in their account
settings.
This may be the best of these three options. Even so, the messages may
remain unseen for some time, or simply overlooked as the receiver
more-or-less periodically scans through and deletes mail in their "Junk"
folder.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
1.1.3. The Solution
As you would have guessed by now, the One True solution to this problem is
to do spam and virus filtering during the SMTP dialogue from the remote host,
as the mail is being received by the inbound mail exchanger for your domain.
This way, if the mail turns out to be undesirable, you can issue a SMTP
reject response rather than face the dilemma described above. As a result:
  *  You will be able to stop the delivery of most junk mail early in the
SMTP transaction, before the actual message data has been received, thus
saving you both network bandwidth and CPU processing.
  *  You will be able to deploy some spam filtering techniques that are not
possible later, such as SMTP transaction delays and Greylisting.
  *  You will be able to notify the sender in case of a delivery failure
(e.g. due to an invalid recipient address) without directly generating
Collateral Spam
We will discuss how you can avoid causing collateral spam indirectly as
a result of rejecting mail forwarded from trusted sources, such as
mailing list servers or mail accounts on other sites [1].
  *  You will be able to protect yourself against collateral spam from
others (such as bogus "You have a virus" messages from anti-virus
software).
OK, you can lower your hands now. If you were standing, and your feet
disappeared from under you, you can now also stand up again.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
1.2. The Good, The Bad, The Ugly
Some filtering techniques are more suitable for use during the SMTP
transaction than others. Some are simply better than others. Nearly all have
their proponents and opponents.
Needless to say, these controversies extend to the methods described here
as well. For instance:
  *  Some argue that DNS checks penalize individual mail senders purely
based on their Internet Service Provider (ISP), not on the merits of
their particular message.
  *  Some point out that ratware traps like SMTP transaction delays and
Greylisting are easily overcome and will be less effective over time,
while continuing to degrade the Quality of Service for legitimate mail.
  *  Some find that Sender Authorization Schemes like the Sender Policy
Framework give ISPs a way to lock their customers in, and do not
adequately address users who roam between different networks or who
forward their e-mail from one host to another.
I will steer away from most of these controversies. Instead, I will try to
provide a functional description of the various techniques available,
including their possible side effects, and then talk a little about my own
experiences using some of them.
That said, there are some filtering methods in use today that I
deliberately omit from this document:
  *  Challenge/response systems (like [http://tmda.net/] TMDA). These are
not suitable for SMTP time filtering, as they rely on first accepting the
mail, then returning a confirmation request to the Envelope Sender. This
technique is therefore outside the scope of this document. [2]
  *  Bayesian Filters. These require training specific to a particular user,
and/or a particular language. As such, these too are not normally
suitable for use during the SMTP transaction (But see User Settings and
Data).
  *  Micropayment Schemes are not really suitable for weeding out junk mail
until all the world's legitimate mail is sent with a virtual postage
stamp. (Though in the mean time, they can be used for the opposite
purpose - that is, to accept mail carrying the stamp that would otherwise
be rejected).
Generally, I have attempted to offer techniques that are as precise as
possible, and to go to great lengths to avoid False Positives. People's
e-mail is important to them, and they spend time and effort writing it. In my
view, willfully using techniques or tools that reject large amounts of
legitimate mail is a show of disrespect, both to the people that are directly
affected and to the Internet as a whole. [3] This is especially true for
SMTP-time system wide filtering, because end recipients usually have little
or no control over the criteria being used to filter their mail.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
1.3. The SMTP Transaction
SMTP is the protocol that is used for mail delivery on the Internet. For a
detailed description of the protocol, please refer to RFC 2821, as well as
Dave Crocker's introduction to [http://www.brandenburg.com/specifications/
draft-crocker-mail-arch-00.htm] Internet Mail Architecture.
Mail deliveries involve an SMTP transaction between the connecting host
(client) and the receiving host (server). For this discussion, the connecting
host is the peer, and the receiving host is your server.
In a typical SMTP transaction, the client issues SMTP commands such as EHLO
, MAIL FROM:, RCPT TO:, and DATA. Your server responds to each command with a
3-digit numeric code indicating whether the command was accepted (2xx), was
subject to a temporary failure or restriction (4xx), or failed definitively/
permanently (5xx), followed by some human readable explanation. A full
description of these codes is included in [http://www.ietf.org/rfc/
rfc2821.txt] RFC 2821.
A best case scenario SMTP transaction typically consists of the following
relevant steps:
Table 1-1. Simple SMTP dialogue
+-------------------------------------+-------------------------------------+
|Client |Server |
+-------------------------------------+-------------------------------------+
|Initiates a TCP connection to server.|Presents an SMTP banner - that is, a |
| |greeting that starts with the code |
| |220 to indicate that it is ready to |
| |speak SMTP (or usually ESMTP, a |
| |superset of SMTP): |
| |220 your.f.q.d.n ESTMP... |
+-------------------------------------+-------------------------------------+
|Introduces itself by way of an Hello |Accepts this greeting with a 250 |
|command, either HELO (now obsolete) |response. If the client used the |
|or EHLO, followed by its own Fully |extended version of the Hello command|
|Qualified Domain Name: |(EHLO), your server knows that it is |
|EHLO peers.f.q.d.n |capable of handling multi-line |
| |responses, and so will normally send |
| |back several lines indicating the |
| |capabilities offered by your server: |
| |250-your.f.q.d.n Hello ... |
| |250-SIZE 52428800 |
| |250-8BITMIME |
| |250-PIPELINING |
| |250-STARTTLS |
| |250-AUTH |
| |250 HELP |
| | |
| |If the PIPELINING capability is |
| |included in this response, the client|
| |can from this point forward issue |
| |several commands at once, without |
| |waiting for the response to each one.|
+-------------------------------------+-------------------------------------+
|Starts a new mail transaction by |Issues a 250 response to indicate |
|specifying the Envelope Sender: |that the sender is accepted. |
|MAIL FROM:<sender@address> | |
| | |
+-------------------------------------+-------------------------------------+
|Lists the Envelope Recipients of the |Issues a response to each command ( |
|message, one at a time, using the |2xx, 4xx, or 5xx, depending on |
|command: |whether delivery to this recipient |
|RCPT TO:<receiver@address> |was accepted, subject to a temporary |
| |failure, or rejected). |
+-------------------------------------+-------------------------------------+
|Issues a DATA command to indicate |Responds 354 to indicate that the |
|that it is ready to send the message.|command has been provisionally |
| |accepted. |
+-------------------------------------+-------------------------------------+
|Transmits the message, starting with |Replies 250 to indicate that the |
|RFC 2822 compliant header lines (such|message has been accepted. |
|as: From:, To:, Subject:, Date:, | |
|Message-ID:). The header and the body| |
|are separated by an empty line. To | |
|indicate the end of the message, the | |
|client sends a single period (".") on| |
|a separate line. | |
+-------------------------------------+-------------------------------------+
|If there are more messages to be |Disconnects. |
|delivered, issues the next MAIL FROM:| |
|command. Otherwise, it says QUIT, or | |
|in rare cases, simply disconnects. | |
+-------------------------------------+-------------------------------------+
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chapter 2. Techniques
In this chapter, we look at various ways to weed out junk mail during
the SMTP transaction from remote hosts. We will also try to anticipate
some of the side effects from deploying these techniques.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.1. SMTP Transaction Delays
As it turns out, one of the more effective ways of stopping spam is by
imposing transaction delays during an inbound SMTP dialogue. This is a
primitive form of teergrubing, see: [http://www.iks-jena.de/mitarb/lutz/
usenet/teergrube.en.html] http://www.iks-jena.de/mitarb/lutz/usenet/
teergrube.en.html
Most spam and nearly all e-mail borne virii are delivered directly to your
server by way of specialized SMTP client software, optimized for sending out
large amounts of mail in a very short time. Such clients are commonly known
as Ratware.
In order to accomplish this task, ratware authors commonly take a few
shortcuts that, ahem, "diverge" a bit from the RFC 2821 specification. One of
the intrinsic traits of ratware is that it is notoriously impatient,
especially with slow-responding mail servers. They may issue the HELO or EHLO
command before the server has presented the initial SMTP banner, and/or try
to pipeline several SMTP commands before the server has advertised the
PIPELINING capability.
Certain Mail Transport Agents (such as Exim) automatically treat such SMTP
protocol violations as synchronization errors, and immediately drop the
incoming connection. If you happen to be using such an MTA, you may already
see a lot of entries to this effect in your log files. In fact, chances are
that if you perform any time-consuming checks (such as DNS checks) prior to
presenting the initial SMTP banner, such errors will occur frequently, as
ratware clients simply do not take the time to wait for your server to come
alive (Things to do, people to spam).
We can help along by imposing additional delays. For instance, you may
decide to wait:
  *  20 seconds before presenting the initial SMTP banner,
  *  20 seconds after the Hello (EHLO or HELO) greeting,
  *  20 seconds, after the MAIL FROM: command, and
  *  20 seconds after each RCPT TO: command.
Where did 20 seconds come from, you ask. Why not a minute? Or several
minutes? After all, RFC 2821 mandates that the sending host (client) should
wait up to several minutes for every SMTP response. The issue is that some
receiving hosts, particularly those that use Exim, may perform Sender Callout
Verification in response to incoming mail delivery attempts. If you or one of
your users send mail to such a host, it will contact the Mail Exchanger (MX
host) for your domain and start an SMTP dialogue in order to validate the
sender address. The default timeout of such Sender Callout Verifications is
30 seconds - if you impose delays this long, the peer's sender callout
verification would fail, and in turn the original mail delivery from you/your
user might be rejected (usually with a temporary failure, which means the
message delivery will be retried for 5 days or so before the mail is finally
returned to the sender).
In other words, 20 seconds is about as long as you can stall before you
start interfering with legitimate mail deliveries.
If you do not like imposing such delays on every SMTP transaction (say, you
have a very busy site and are low on machine resources), you may choose to
use "selective" transaction delays. In this case, you could impose the delay:
  *  If there is a problem with the peer's DNS information (see DNS checks).
  *  After detecting some sign of trouble during the SMTP transaction (see
SMTP checks).
  *  Only in the highest-numbered MX host in your DNS zone, i.e. the mail
exchanger with the last priority. Often, Ratware specifically target
these hosts, whereas legitimate MTAs will try the lower-numbered MX hosts
first.
In fact, selective transaction delays may be a good way to incorporate some
less conclusive checks that we will discuss in the following sections. You
probably do not wish to reject the mail outright based the results from e.g.
the SPEWS blacklist, but on the other hand, it may provide a strong enough
indication of trouble that you can at least impose transaction delays. After
all, legitimate mail deliveries are not affected, other than being subjected
to a slight delay.
Conversely, if you find conclusive evidence of spamming (e.g. by way of
certain SMTP checks), and your server can afford it, you may choose to impose
an extended delay, e.g. 15 minutes or so, before finally rejecting the
delivery [4]. This is for little or no benefit other than slowing down the
spammer a little bit in their quest to reach as many people as possible
before DNS blacklists and other collaborative network checks catch up. In
other words, pure altruism on your side. :-)
In my own case, selective transaction delays and the resulting SMTP
synchronization errors account for nearly 50% of rejected incoming delivery
attempts. This roughly translates into saying that nearly 50% of incoming
junk mail is stopped by SMTP transaction delays alone.
See also What happens when spammers adapt....
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.2. DNS Checks
Some indication of the integrity of a particular peer can be gleaned
directly from the Domain Name System (DNS), even before SMTP commands are
issued. In particular, various DNS blacklists can be consulted to find out if
a particular IP address is known to violate or fulfill certain criteria, and
a simple pair of forward/reverse (DNS/rDNS) lookups can be used as a vague
indicator of the host's general integrity.
Moreover, various data items presented during the SMTP dialogue (such as
the name presented in the Hello greeting) can be subjected to DNS validation,
once it becomes available. For a discussion on these items, see the section
on SMTP checks, below.
A word of caution, though. DNS checks are not always conclusive (e.g. a
required DNS server may not be responding), and not always indicative of
spam. Moreover, if you have a very busy site, they can be expensive in terms
of processing time per message. That said, they can provide useful
information for logging purposes, and/or as part of a more holistic integrity
check.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.2.1. DNS Blacklists
DNS blacklists (DNSbl's, formerly called "Real-time Black-hole Lists" after
the original blacklist, "mail-abuse.org") make up perhaps the most common
tool to perform transaction-time spam blocking. The receiving server performs
one or more rDNS lookups of the peer's IP address within various DNSbl zones,
such as "dnsbl.sorbs.net", "opm.blitzed.org", "lists.dsbl.org", and so forth.
If a matching DNS record is found, a typical action is to reject the mail
delivery. [5]
If in addition to the DNS address ("A" record) you look up the "TXT" record
of an entry, you will typically receive a one-line description of the
listing, suitable for inclusion in a SMTP reject response. To try this out,
you can use the "host" command provided on most Linux and UNIX systems:
host -t txt 2.0.0.127.dnsbl.sorbs.net
There are currently hundreds of these lists available, each with different
listing criteria, and with different listing/unlisting policies. Some lists
even combine several listing criteria into the same DNSbl, and issue
different data in response to the rDNS lookup, depending on which criterion
affects the address provided. For instance, a rDNS lookup against
sbl-xbl.spamhaus.org returns 127.0.0.2 for IP addresses that are believed by
the SpamHaus staff to directly belong to spammers and their providers,
127.0.0.4 response for Zombie Hosts, or a 127.0.0.6 response for Open Proxy
servers.
Unfortunately, many of these lists contain large blocks of IP addresses
that are not directly responsible for the alleged violations, don't have
clear listing / delisting policies, and/or post misleading information about
which addresses are listed[6]. The blind trust in such lists often cause a
large amount of what is referred to as Collateral Damage (not to be confused
with Collateral Spam).
For that reason, rather than rejecting mail deliveries outright based on a
single positive response from DNS blacklists, many administrators prefer to
use these lists in a more nuanced fashion. They may consult several lists,
and assign a "score" to each positive response. If the total score for a
given IP address reaches a given threshold, deliveries from that address are
rejected. This is how DNS blacklists are used by filtering software such as
SpamAssassin (Spam Scanners).
One could also use such lists as one of several triggers for SMTP
transaction delays on incoming connections (a.k.a. "teergrubing"). If a host
is listed in a DNSbl, your server would delay its response to every SMTP
command issued by the peer for, say, 20 seconds. Several other criteria can
be used as triggers for such delays; see the section on SMTP transaction
delays.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.2.2. DNS Integrity Check
Another way to use DNS is to perform a reverse lookup of the peer's IP
address, then a forward lookup of the resulting name. If the original IP
address is included in the result, its DNS integrity has been validated.
Otherwise, the DNS information for the connecting host is not valid.
Rejecting mails based on this criterion may be an option if you are a
militant member of the DNS police, setting up an incoming MX for your own
personal domain, and don't mind rejecting legitimate mail as a way to impress
upon the sender that they need to ask their own system administrator to clean
up their DNS records. For everyone else, the result of a DNS integrity check
should probably only be used as one data point in a larger set of heuristics.
Alternatively, as above, using SMTP transaction delays for misconfigured
hosts may not be a bad idea.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.3. SMTP checks
Once the SMTP dialogue is underway, you can perform various checks on the
commands and arguments presented by the remote host. For instance, you will
want to ensure that the name presented in the Hello greeting is valid.
However, even if you decide to reject the delivery attempt early in the
SMTP transaction, you may not want to perform the actual rejection right
away. Instead, you may stall the sender with SMTP transaction delays until
after the RCPT TO:, then reject the mail at that point.
The reason is that some ratware does not understand rejections early in the
SMTP transaction; they keep trying. On the other hand, most of them give up
if the RCPT TO: fails.
Besides, this gives a nice opportunity to do a little teergrubing.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.3.1. Hello (HELO/EHLO) checks
Per RFC 2821, the first SMTP command issued by the client should be EHLO
(or if unsupported, HELO), followed by its primary, Fully Qualified Domain
Name. This is known as the Hello greeting. If no meaningful FQDN is
available, the client can supply its IP address enclosed in square brackets:
"[1.2.3.4]". This last form is known as an IPv4 address "literal" notation.
Quite understandably, Ratware rarely present their own FQDN in the Hello
greeting. Rather, greetings from ratware usually attempt to conceal the
sending host's identity, and/or to generate confusing and/or misleading
"Received:" trails in the message header. Some examples of such greetings
are:
  *  Unqualified names (i.e. names without a period), such as the "local
part" (username) of the recipient address.
  *  A plain IP address (i.e. not an IP literal); usually yours, but can be
a random one.
  *  Your domain name, or the FQDN of your server.
  *  Third party domain names, such as yahoo.com and hotmail.com.
  *  Non-existing domain names, or domain names with non-existing name
servers.
  *  No greeting at all.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.3.1.1. Simple HELO/EHLO syntax checks
Some of these RFC 2821 violations are both easy to check against, and clear
indications that the sending host is running some form of Ratware. You can
reject such greetings -- either right away, or e.g. after the RCPT TO:
command.
First, feel free to reject plain IP addresses in the Hello greeting. Even
if you wish to generously allow everything RFC 2821 mandates, recommends, and
suggests, you will note that IP addresses should always be enclosed in square
brackets when presented in lieu of a name. [7]
In particular, you may wish to issue a strongly worded rejection message to
hosts that introduce themselves using your IP address - or for that matter,
your host name. They are plainly lying. Perhaps you want to stall the sender
with an exceedingly long SMTP transaction delay in response to such a
greeting; say, hours.
For that matter, my own experience indicates that no legitimate sites on
the internet present themselves to other internet sites using an IP address
literal (the [x.y.z.w] notation) either. Nor should they; all hosts sending
mail directly on the internet should use their valid Fully Qualified Domain
Name. The only use of use of IP literals I have come across is from mail user
agents on my local area network, such as Ximian Evolution, configured to use
my server as outgoing SMTP server (smarthost). Indeed, I only accept literals
from my own LAN.
You may or may not also wish to reject unqualified host names (host names
without a period). I find that these are rarely (but not never - how's that
for double negative negations) legitimate.
Similarly, you can reject host names that contain invalid characters. For
internet domains, only alphanumeric letters and hyphen are valid characters;
a hyphen is not allowed as the first character. (You may also want to
consider the underscore a valid character, because it is quite common to see
this from misconfigured, but ultimately well-meaning, Windows clients).
Finally, if you receive a MAIL FROM: command without first having received
a Hello greeting, well, polite people greet first.
On my servers, I reject greetings that fail any of these syntax checks.
However, the rejection does not actually take place until after the RCPT TO:
command. In the mean time, I impose a 20 second transaction delay after each
SMTP command (HELO/EHLO, MAIL FROM:, RCPT TO:).
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.3.1.2. Verifying the Hello greeting via DNS
Hosts that make it this far have presented at least a superficially
credible greeting. Now it is time to verify the provided name via DNS. You
can:
  *  Perform a forward lookup of the provided name, and match the result
against the peer's IP address
  *  Perform a reverse lookup of the peer's IP address, and match it against
name provided in the greeting.
If either of these two checks succeeds, the name has been verified.
Your MTA may have a built-in option to perform this check. For instance, in
Exim (see Appendix A), you want to set "helo_try_verify_hosts = *", and
create ACLs that take action based on the "verify = helo" condition.
This check is a little more expensive in terms of processing time and
network resources than the simple syntax checks. Moreover, unlike the syntax
checks, a mismatch does not always indicate ratware; several large internet
sites, such as hotmail.com, yahoo.com, and amazon.com, frequently present
unverifiable Hello greetings.
On my servers, I do a DNS validation of the Hello greeting if I am not
already stalling the sender with transaction delays based on prior checks.
Then, if this check fails, I impose a 20 second delay on every SMTP command
from this point forward. I also prepare a "X-HELO-Warning:" header that I
will later add to the message(s), and use to increase the SpamAssassin score
for possible rejection after the message data has been received.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.3.2. Sender Address Checks
After the client has presented the MAIL FROM: <address> command, you can
validate the supplied Envelope Sender address as follows. [8]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.3.2.1. Sender Address Syntax Check
Does the supplied address conform to the format <localpart@domain>? Is the
domain part a syntactically valid Fully Qualified Domain Name?
Often, your MTA performs these checks by default.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.3.2.2. Impostor Check
In the case where you and your users send all your outgoing mail only
through a select few servers, you can reject messages from other hosts in
which the "domain" of the sender address is your own.
A more general alternative to this check is Sender Policy Framework.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.3.2.3. Simple Sender Address Validation
If the address is local, is the "local part" (the part before the @ sign) a
valid mailbox on your system?
If the address is remote, does the "domain" (the part after the @ sign)
exist?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.3.2.4. Sender Callout Verification
This is a mechanism that is offered by some MTAs, such as Exim and Postfix,
to validate the "local part" of a remote sender address. In Postfix
terminology, it is called "Sender Address Verification".
Your server contacts the MX for the domain provided in the sender address,
attempting to initiate a secondary SMTP transaction as if delivering mail to
this address. It does not actually send any mail; rather, once the RCPT TO:
command has been either accepted or rejected by the remote host, your server
sends QUIT.
By default, Exim uses an empty envelope sender address for such callout
verifications. The goal is to determine if a Delivery Status Notification
would be accepted if returned to the sender.
Postfix, on the other hand, defaults to the sender address <
postmaster@domain> for address verification purposes (domain is taken from
the $myorigin variable). For this reason, you may wish to treat this sender
address the same way that you treat the NULL envelope sender (for instance,
avoid SMTP transaction delays or Greylisting, but require Envelope Sender
Signatures in recipient addresses). More on this in the implementation
appendices.
You may find that this check alone may not be suitable as a trigger to
reject incoming mail. Occasionally, legitimate mail, such as a recurring
billing statement, is sent out from automated services with an invalid return
address. Also, an unfortunate side effect of spam is that some users tend to
mangle the return address in their outgoing mails (though this may affect the
"From:" header in the message itself more often than the Envelope Sender).
Moreover, this check only verifies that an address is valid, not that it
was authentic as the sender of this particular message (but see also Envelope
Sender Signature).
Finally, there are reports of sites, such as "aol.com", that will
unconditionally blacklist any system from which they discover sender callout
requests. These sites may be frequent victims of Joe Jobs, and as a result,
receive storms of sender callout requests. By taking part in these DDoS
(Distributed Denial-of-Servcie) attacks, you are effectively turning yourself
into a pawn in the hands of the spammer.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.3.3. Recipient Address Checks
This should be simple, you say. A recipient address is either valid, in
which case the mail is delivered, or invalid, in which case your MTA takes
care of the rejection by default.
Let us have a look, shall we?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.3.3.1. Open Relay Prevention
Do not relay mail from remote hosts to remote addresses! (Unless the sender
is authenticated).
This may seem obvious to most of us, but apparently this is a frequently
overlooked consideration. Also, not everyone may have a full grasp of the
various internet standards related to e-mail addresses and delivery paths
(consider "percent hack domains", "bang (!) paths", etc).
If you are unsure whether your MTA acts as an an Open Relay, you can test
it via "relay-test.mail-abuse.org". At a shell prompt on your server, type:
telnet relay-test.mail-abuse.org
This is a service that will use various tests to see whether your SMTP
server appears to forward mail to remote e-mail addresses, and/or any number
of address "hacks" such as the ones mentioned above.
Preventing your servers from acting as open relays is extremely important.
If your server is an open relay, and spammers find you, you will be listed in
numerous DNS blacklists instantly. If the maintainers of certain other DNS
blacklists find you (by probing, and/or by acting on complaints), you will be
listed in those for an extended period of time.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.3.3.2. Recipient Address Lookups
This, too may seem banal to most of us. It is not always so.
If your users' mail accounts and mailboxes are stored directly on your
incoming mail exchanger, you can simply check that the "local part" of the
recipient address corresponds to a valid mailbox. No problem here.
There are two scenarios where verification of the recipient address is more
cumbersome:
  *  If your machine is a backup MX for the recipient domain.
  *  If your machine forwards all mail for your domain to another
(presumably internal) server.
The alternative to recipient address verification is to accept all
recipient addresses within these respective domains, which in turn means that
you or the destination server might have to generate a Delivery Status
Notification for recipient addresses that later turn out to be invalid.
Ultimately, this means that you would be generating collateral spam.
With that in mind, let us see how we can verify the recipient in the
scenarios listed above.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.3.3.2.1. Recipient Callout Verification
This is a mechanism that is offered by some MTAs, such as Exim and Postfix,
to verify the "local part" of a remote recipient address (see Sender Callout
Verification for a description of how this works). In Postfix terminology,
this is called "Recipient Address Verification".
In this case, server attempts to contact the final destination host to
validate each recipient address before you, in turn, accept the RCPT TO:
command from your peer.
This solution is simple and elegant. It works with any MTA that might be
running on the final destination host, and without access to any particular
directory service. Moreover, if that MTA happens to perform a fuzzy match on
the recipient address (this is the case with Lotus Domino servers), this
check will accurately reflect whether the recipient address is eventually
going to be accepted or not - something which may not be true for the
mechanisms described below.
Be sure to keep the original Envelope Sender intact for the recipient
callout, or the response from the destination host may not be accurate. For
instance, it may reject bounces (i.e. mail with no envelope sender) for
system users and aliases, as described in Accept Bounces Only for Real Users.
Among major MTAs, Exim and Postfix support this mechanism.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.3.3.2.2. Directory Services
Another good solution would be a directory service (e.g. one or more LDAP
servers) that can be queried by your MTA. The most common MTAs all support
LDAP, NIS, and/or various other backends that are commonly used to provide
user account information.
The main sticking point is that unless the final destination host of the
e-mail already uses such a directory service to map user names to mailboxes,
there may be some work involved in setting this up.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.3.3.2.3. Replicated Mailbox Lists
If none of the options above are viable, you could fall back to a "poor
man's directory service", where you would periodically copy a current list of
mailboxes from the machine where they are located, to your MX host(s). Your
MTA would then consult this list to validate RCPT TO: commands in incoming
mail.
If the machine(s) that host(s) your mailboxes is/are running on some flavor
of UNIX or Linux, you could write a script to first generate such a list,
perhaps from the local "/etc/passwd" file, and then copy it to your MX host
(s) using the "scp" command from the [http://www.openssh.org/] OpenSSH suite.
You could then set up a "cron" job (type man cron for details) to
periodically run this script.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.3.3.3. Dictionary Attack Prevention
Dictionary Attack is a term used to describe SMTP transactions where the
sending host keeps issuing RCPT TO: commands to probe for possible recipient
addresses based on common names (often alphabetically starting with "aaron",
but sometimes starting later in the alphabet, and/or at random). If a
particular address is accepted by your server, that address is added into the
spammer's arsenal.
Some sites, particularly larger ones, find that they are frequent targets
of such attacks. From the spammer's perspective, chances of finding a given
username on a large site is better than on sites with only a few users.
One effective way to combat dictionary attacks is to issue increasing
transaction delays for each failed address. For instance, the first
non-existing recipient address can be rejected with a 20-second delay, the
second address with a 30-second delay, and so on.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.3.3.4. Accept only one recipient for DSNs
Legitimate Delivery Status Notifications should be sent to only one
recipient address - the originator of the original message that triggered the
notification. You can drop the connection if the Envelope Sender address is
empty, but there are more than one recipients.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.4. Greylisting
The greylisting concept is presented by Evan Harris in a whitepaper at:
[http://projects.puremagic.com/greylisting/] http://projects.puremagic.com/
greylisting/.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.4.1. How it works
Like SMTP transaction delays, greylisting is a simple but highly effective
mechanism to weed out messages that are being delivered via Ratware. The idea
is to establish whether a prior relationship exists between the sender and
the receiver of a message. For most legitimate mail it does, and the delivery
proceeds normally.
On the other hand, if no prior relationship exists, the delivery is
temporariliy rejected (with a 451 SMTP response). Legitimate MTAs will treat
this response accordingly, and retry the delivery in a little while[9]. In
contrast, ratware will either make repeated delivery attempts right away, and
/or simply give up and move on to the next target in its address list.
Three pieces of information from a delivery attempt, referred to a as a
triplet are used to uniquely identify the relationship between a sender and a
receiver:
  *  The Envelope Sender.
  *  The sending host's IP address.
  *  The Envelope Recipient.
If a delivery attempt was temporarily rejected, this triplet is cached. It
remains greylisted for a given amount of time (nominally 1 hour), after which
it is whitelisted, and new delivery attempts would succeed. If no new
delivery attempts occur prior to a given timeout (nominally 4 hours), then
the triplet expires from the cache.
If a whitelisted triplet has not been seen for an extended duration (at
minimum one month, to account for monthly billing statements and the like),
it is expired. This prevents unlimited growth of the list.
These timeouts are taken from Evan Harris' original greylisting whitepaper
(or should we say, ahem, "greypaper"?) Some people have found that a larger
timeout may be needed before greylisted triplets expire, because certain ISPs
(such as earthlink.net) retry deliveries only every 6 hours or similar. [10]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.4.2. Greylisting in Multiple Mail Exchangers
If you operate more than one incoming mail exchangers, and each exchanger
maintains its own greylisting cache, then:
  *  First-time deliveries from a given sender to one of your users may
theoretically be delayed up to N times the initial 1-hour delay, where N
is the number of mail exchangers. This is because the message would
likely be retried at a different server than the one that issued the 451
response to the initial delivery. In the worst case, the sender host may
not get around to retrying the delivery to the first exchanger for 4
hours, or until after the greylist triplet has expired, thereby causing
the delivery attempt to be rejected over and over again, until the sender
gives up (usually after 4 days or so).
In practice, this is unlikely. If a delivery attempt temporarily fails,
the sender host normally retries the delivery immediately, using a
different MX. Thus, after one hour, any of these MX hosts would accept
the message.
  *  Even after a triplet has been whitelisted in one of your MXs, the next
message with the same triplet will be greylisted if it is delivered to a
different MX.
For these reasons, you may want to implement a solution where the database
of greylist triplets is shared between your incoming mail exchangers.
However, since the machine that hosts this database would become a single
point of failure, you would have to take a sensible action if that machine is
down (e.g. accept all deliveries). Or you could use database replication
techniques and have the SMTP server fall back to one of the replicating
servers for lookups.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.4.3. Results
In my own experience, greylisting gets rid of about 90% of unique junk mail
deliveries, after most of the SMTP checks previously described are applied!
If you used greylisting as a first defense, it would likely catch an even
higher percentage of incoming junk mail.
Conversely, there are virtually zero False Positives resulting from this
technique. All major Mail Transport Agents perform delivery retries after a
temporary failure, in a manner that will eventually result in a successful
delivery.
The downside to greylisting is a legitimate mail from people who have not
e-mailed a particular recipient in the past is subject to a one-hour delay
(or maybe several hours, if you operate several MX hosts).
See also What happens when spammers adapt....
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.5. Sender Authorization Schemes
Various schemes have been developed for sender verification where not only
the validity, but also the authenticity, of the sender address is checked.
The owner of a internet domain specifies certain criteria that must be
fulfilled in authentic deliveries from senders within that domain.
Two early proposed schemes of this kind were:
  *  MAIL-FROM MX records, conceived by Paul Vixie <paul (at) vix.com>
  *  Reverse Mail Exchanger (RMX) records as an addition to DNS itself,
conceived and published by Hadmut Danisch <hadmut (at) danisch.de>.
Under both of these schemes, all mails from <user@domain.com> had to come
from the hosts specified in <domain.com>'s DNS zone.
These schemes have evolved. Alas, they have also forked.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.5.1. Sender Policy Framework (SPF)
"Server Policy Framework" (previously "Sender Permitted From") is perhaps
the most well-known scheme for sender authorization. It is loosely based on
the original schemes described above, but allows for a bit more flexibility
in the criteria that can be posted by the domain holder.
SPF information is published as a TXT record in a domain's top-level DNS
zone. This record can specify:
  *  which hosts are allowed to send mail from that domain
  *  the mandatory presence of a GPG (GNU Privacy Guard) signature in
outgoing mail from the domain
  *  other criteria; see [http://spf.pobox.com/] http://spf.pobox.com/ for
details.
The structure of the TXT record is still undergoing development, however
basic features to accomplish the above are in place. It starts with the
string v=spf1, followed by such modifiers as:
  *  a - the IP address of the domain itself is a valid sender host
  *  mx - the incoming mail exchanger for that domain is also a valid sender
  *  ptr - if a rDNS lookup of the sending host's IP address yields a name
within the domain portion of the sender address, it is a valid sender.
Each of these modifiers may be prefixed with a plus sign (+), minus sign
(-), question mark (?), or tilde (~) to indicate whether it specifies an
authorative source, an non-authorative source, a neutral stance, or a likely
non-authorative source, respectively.
Each modifier may also be extended with a colon, followed by an alternate
domain name. For instance, if you are a Comcast subscriber, your own DNS zone
may include the string "-ptr:client.comcast.net ptr:comcast.net" to indicate
that your outgoing e-mail never comes from a host that resolves to
anything.client.comcast.net, but could come from other hosts that resolve to
anything.comcast.net.
SPF information is currently published for a number of high-profile
internet domains, such as aol.com, altavista.com, dyndns.org, earthlink.net,
and google.com.
Sender authorization schemes in general and SPF in particular are not
universally accepted. In particular, one objection is that domain holders may
effectively establish a monopoly on relaying outgoing mail from their users/
customers.
Another objection is that SPF breaks traditional e-mail forwarding - the
forwarding host may not have the authority to do so per the SPF information
in the envelope sender domain. This is partly addressed via [http://
spf.pobox.com/srs.html] SRS, or Sender Rewriting Scheme, wherein the
forwarder of the mail will modify the Envelope Sender address to the format:
user=source.domain@forwarder.domain
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.5.2. Microsoft Caller-ID for E-Mail
Similar to SPF, in that acceptance criteria are posted via a TXT record in
the sending domain's DNS zone. However, rather than relying on simple
keywords, MS CIDE information consists of fairly large structures encoded in
XML. The XML schema is published under a license by Microsoft.
While SPF would nominally be used to check the Envelope Sender address of
an e-mail, MS CIDE is mainly a tool to validate the RFC 2822 header of the
message itself. Thus, the earliest point at which such a check could be
applied would be after the message data has been delivered, before issuing
the final 250 response.
Quite frankly, dead on arrival. Encumbered by patent issues and sheer
complexity.
That said, Recent SPF tools posted on [http://spf.pobox.com/] http://
spf.pobox.com/ are capable of checking MS Caller-ID information in addition
to SPF.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.5.3. RMX++
(part of Simple Caller Authorization Framework - SCAF). This scheme is
developed by Hadmut Danisch, who also conceived of the original RMX.
RMX++ allows for dynamic authorization by way of HTTP servers. The domain
owner publishes a server location via DNS, and the receiving host contacts
that server in order to obtain an authorization record to verify the
authenticity of the caller.
This scheme allows the domain owner more fine-grained control of criteria
used to authenticate the sender address, without having to publicly reveal
the structure of their network (as with SPF information in static TXT
records). For instance, an example from Hadmut is an authorization server
that allows no more than five messages from a given address per day after
business hours, then issues an alert once the limit has been reached.
Moreover, SCAF is not limited to e-mail, but can also be used to provide
caller authentication for other services such as Voice over IP (VoIP).
One possible downside with RMX++, as noted by Rick Stewart <rick.stewart
(at) theinternetco.net>, is its impact on machine and network resources:
Replies from HTTP servers are not as widely cached as information obtained
directly via DNS, and it is signifcantly more expensive to make an HTTP
request than a DNS request.
Further, Rick notes that the dynamic nature of RMX++ makes faults harder to
track. If there is a five-message-per-day limit, as in the example above, and
one message gets checked five times, then the limit is hit with a single
message. It makes re-checking a message impossible.
For more information on RMX, RMX++, and SCAF, refer to: [http://
www.danisch.de/work/security/antispam.html] http://www.danisch.de/work/
security/antispam.html.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.6. Message data checks
Time has come to look at the content of the message itself. This is what
conventional spam and virus scanners do, as they normally operate on the
message after it has been accepted. However, in our case, we perform these
checks before issuing the final 250 response, so that we have a chance to
reject the mail on the spot rather than later generating Collateral Spam.
If your incoming mail exchangers are very busy (i.e. large site, few
machines), you may find that performing some or all of these checks directly
in the mail exchanger is too costly. In particular, running Virus Scanners
and Spam Scanners do take up a fair amount of CPU bandwidth and time.
If so, you will want to set up dedicated machines for these scanning
operations. Most server-side anti-spam and anti-virus software can be invoked
over the network, i.e. from your mail exchanger. More on this in the
following chapters, where we discuss implementation for the various MTAs.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.6.1. Header checks
2.6.1.1. Missing Header Lines
RFC 2822 mandates that a message should contain at least the following
header lines:
From: ...
To: ...
Subject: ...
Message-ID: ...
Date: ...
The absence of any of these lines means that the message is not generated
by a mainstream Mail User Agent, and that it is probably junk [11].
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.6.1.2. Header Address Syntax Check
Addresses presented in the message header (i.e. the To:, Cc:, From: ...
fields) should be syntactically valid. Enough said.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.6.1.3. Simple Header Address Validation
For each address in the message header:
  *  If the address is local, is the local part (before the @ sign) a valid
mailbox?
  *  If the address is remote, does the domain part (after the @ sign)
exist?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.6.1.4. Header Address Callout Verification
This works similar to Sender Callout Verification and Recipient Callout
Verification. Each remote header address is verified by calling the primary
MX for the corresponding domain to determine if a Delivery Status
Notification would be accepted.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.6.2. Junk Mail Signature Repositories
One trait of junk mail is that it is sent to a large number of addresses.
If 50 other recipients have already flagged a particular message as spam, why
couldn't you use this fact to decide whether or not to accept the message
when it is delivered to you? Better yet, why not set up Spam Traps that feed
a public pool of known spam?
I am glad you asked. As it turns out, such pools do exist:
  *  [http://razor.sf.net/] Razor
  *  [http://pyzor.sf.net/] Pyzor
  *  Distributed Checksum Clearinghouse (DCC)
These tools have progressed beyond simple signature checks that only
trigger if you receive an identical copy of a message that is known to be
junk mail. Rather, they evaluate common patterns, to account for slight
variations in the message header and body.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.6.3. Binary garbage checks
Messages containing non-printable characters are rare. When they do show
up, the message is nearly always a virus, or in some cases spam written in a
non-western language, without the appropriate MIME encoding.
One particular case is where the message contains NUL characters (ordinal
zero). Even if you decide that figuring out what a non-printable character
means is more complex than beneficial, you might consider checking for this
character. That is because some Mail Delivery Agents, such as the [http://
asg.web.cmu.edu/cyrus/] Cyrus Mail Suite, will ultimately reject mails that
contain it. [12]. If you use such software, you should definitely consider
getting rid of NUL characters.
On the other hand, the (now obsolete) RFC 822 specification did not
explicitly prohibit NUL characters in the message. For this reason, as an
alternative to rejecting mails containing it, you may choose to strip these
characters from the message before delivering it to Cyrus.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.6.4. MIME checks
Similarly, it might be worthwhile to validate the MIME structure of
incoming message. MIME decoding errors or inconsistencies do not happen very
often; but when they do, the message is definitely junk. Moreover, such
errors may indicate potential problems in subsequent checks, such as File
Attachment Checks, Virus Scanners, or Spam Scanners.
In other words, if the MIME encoding is illegal, reject the message.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.6.5. File Attachment Check
When was the last time someone sent you a Windows screensaver (".scr" file)
or Windows Program Information File (".pif") that you actually wanted?
Consider blocking messages with "Windows executable" file attachment(s) -
i.e. file names that end with a period followed by any of a number of
three-letter combinations such as the above. This check consumes
significantly less resources on your server than Virus Scanners, and may also
catch new virii for which a signature does not yet exist in your anti-virus
scanner.
For a more-or-less comprehensive list of such "file name extensions",
please visit: [http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;
290497] http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;290497.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.6.6. Virus Scanners
A number of different server-side virus scanners are available. To name a
few:
  *  [http://www.vanja.com/tools/sophie/] Sophie
  *  [http://www.kapersky.com/] KAVDaemon
  *  [http://clamav.elektrapro.com/] ClamAV
  *  [http://www.sald.com/] DrWeb
In situations where you are not willing to block all potentially dangerous
files based on their file names alone (consider ".zip" files), such scanners
are helpful. Also, they will be able to catch virii that are not transmitted
as file attachments, such as the "Bagle.R" virus that arrived in March, 2004.
In most cases, the machine performing the virus scan does not need to be
your mail exchanger. Most of these anti-virus scanners can be invoked on a
different host over a network connection.
Anti-virus software mainly detect virii based on a set of signatures for
known virii, or virus definitions. These need to be updated regularly, as new
virii are developed. Also, the software itself should at any time be up to
date for maximum accuracy.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.6.7. Spam Scanners
Similarly, anti-spam software can be used to classify messages based on a
large set of heuristics, including their content, standards compliance, and
various network checks such as DNS Blacklists and Junk Mail Signature
Repository. In the end, such software typically assigns a composite "score"
to each message, indicating the likelihood that the message is spam, and if
the score is above a certain threshold, would classify it as such.
Two of the most popular server-side heuristic anti-spam filters are:
  *  [http://www.spamassassin.org/] SpamAssassin
  *  [http://www.brightmail.com/] BrightMail
These tools undergo a constant evolution as spammers find ways to
circumvent their various checks. For instance, consider "creative" spelling,
such as "GR0W lO 1NCH35". So, just like anti-virus software, if you use
anti-spam software, you should update it frequently for the highest level of
accuracy.
I use SpamAssassin, although to minimize impact on machine resources, it is
no longer my first line of defense. Out of approximately 500 junk mail
delivery attempts to my personal address per day, about 50 reach the point
where they are being checked by SpamAssassin (mainly because they are
forwarded from one of my other accounts, so the checks described above are
not effective). Out of these 50 messages, one message ends up in my inbox
approximately every 2 or 3 days.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.7. Blocking Collateral Spam
Collateral Spam is more difficult to block with the techniques described so
far, because it normally arrives from legitimate sites using standard mail
transport software (such as Sendmail, Postfix, or Exim). The challenge is to
distinguish these messages from valid Delivery Status Notifications returned
in response to mail sent from your own users. Here are some ways that people
do this:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.7.1. Bogus Virus Warning Filter
Most of the time, collateral spam is virus warnings generated by anti-virus
scanners[13]. In turn, the wording in the Subject: line of these virus
warnings, and/or other characteristics, is usually provided by the anti-virus
software itself. As such, you could create a list of the more common
characteristics, and filter out such bogus virus warnings.
Well, aren't you in luck - someone already did this for you. :-)
Tim Jackson <tim (at) timj.co.uk> maintains a list of bogus virus warnings
for use with SpamAssassin. This list is available at: [http://www.timj.co.uk/
linux/bogus-virus-warnings.cf] http://www.timj.co.uk/linux/
bogus-virus-warnings.cf.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.7.2. Publish SPF info for your domain
The purpose of the Sender Policy Framework is precisely to protect against
Joe Jobs; i.e. to prevent forgeries of valid e-mail addresses.
If you publish SPF records in the DNS zone for your domain, then recipient
hosts that incorporate SPF checks would not have accepted the forged message
in the first place. As such, they would not be sending a Delivery Status
Notification to your site.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.7.3. Enveloper Sender Signature
A different approach that I am currently experimenting with myself is to
add a signature in the local part of the Envelope Sender address in outgoing
mail, then check for this signature in the Envelope Recipient address before
accepting incoming Delivery Status Notifications. For instance, the generated
sender address might be of the following format:
localpart=signature@domain
Normal message replies are unaffected. These replies go to the address in
the From: or Reply-To: field of the message, which are left intact.
Sounds easy, doesn't it? Unfortunately, generating a signature that is
suitable for this purpose is a bit more complex than it sounds. There are a
couple of conflicting considerations to take into account:
  *  To gain any benefit from this method, the signed envelope sender
address that you generate should be useless in the hands of spammers.
Typically, this would imply that the signature incorporates a time stamp
that would eventually expire:
sender=timestamp=hash@domain
  *  If you send mail to a site that incorporates Greylisting, your envelope
sender address should remain constant for that particular recipient.
Otherwise, your mail will continuously be greylisted.
With this in mind, you could generate a Envelope Sender based on the
Envelope Recipient address:
sender=recipient=recipient.domain=hash@domain
Although this address does not expire, if you start seeing junk mail to
it, you will at least know the source of the leak - it is incorported in
the recipient address. Moreover, you can easily block specific recipient
address signatures, without affecting normal mail delivery to that same
recipient.
  *  Two more issues occur with mailing list servers. Usually, replies to
request mails (such as "subscribe"/"unsubscribe") are sent with no
envelope sender.
  +  The first issue pertains to servers that send responses back to the
Envelope Sender address of the request mail (as in the case of <
discuss@en.tldp.org>). The problem is that commands for the mailing
list server (such as subscribe or unsubscribe) are typically sent to
one or more different addresses (e.g. <discuss-subscribe@en.tldp.org>
and <discuss-unsubscribe@en.tldp.org>, respectively) than the address
used for list mail. Hence, the subscriber address will be different
from the sender address in messages sent to the list itself -- and in
this example, also different from the address that will be generated
for unsubscription requests. As a result, you may not be able to post
to the list, or unsubscribe.
The compromise would be to incorporate only the recipient domain in
the sender signature. The sender address might then look like:
subscribername=en.tldp.org=hash@subscriber.domain
  +  The second issue pertains to those that send responses back to the
reply address in the message header of the request mail (such as <
spam-l-request@peach.ease.lsoft.com>). Since this address is not
signed, the response from the list server would be blocked by your
server.
There is not much you can do about this, other than to "whitelist"
these particular servers in such a way that they are allowed to
return mail to unsigned recipient addresses.
At this point, this approach starts losing some of its edge. Moreover, even
legitimate DSNs are rejected unless the original mail has been sent via your
server. Thus, you should only consider doing this if for those of your users
that do not roam, or otherwise send their outgoing mail via servers outside
your control.
That said, in situations where none of the above concerns apply to you,
this method gives you a good way to not only eliminate collateral spam, but
also a way to educate the owners of the sites that (presumably unwittingly)
generate it. Moreover, as a side benefit, sites that perform Sender Callout
Verification will only get a positive response from you if the original mail
was, indeed, sent from your site. In essence, you are reducing your exposure
to sender address forgeries by spammers.
You could perhaps allow your users to specify whether to sign outgoing
mails, and if so, specify which hosts should be allowed to return mails to
the unsigned version of their address. For instance, if they have system
accounts on your mail server, you could check for the existence and content,
respectively, of a given file in their home directory.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.7.4. Accept Bounces Only for Real Users
Even if you check for envelope sender signatures, there may be a loophole
that allows bogus bounces to be accepted. Specifically, if your users have to
opt in to the scheme, you are probably not checking for this signature in
mails sent to system aliases, such as postmaster or mailer-daemon. Moreover,
since these users do not generate outgoing mail, they should not receive any
bounces.
You can reject mail if it is sent to such system aliases, or alternatively,
if there is no mailbox for the provided recipient address.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chapter 3. Considerations
Some specific considerations come into play as a result of system-wide
SMTP time filtering. Here we cover some of those.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.1. Multiple Incoming Mail Exchangers
Most domains list more than one incoming Mail Exchangers (a.k.a. "MX hosts"
). If you do so, then bear in mind that in order to have any effect, any SMTP
time filtering you incorporate on the primary MX has to be incorporated on
all the others as well. Otherwise, the sending host would simply sidestep
filtering by retrying the mail delivery through your backup server(s).
If the backup server(s) are not under your control, ask yourself whether
you need multiple MXs in the first place. In this situation, chances are that
they serve only as redundant mail servers, and that they in turn forward the
mail to your primary MX. If so, you probably don't need them. If your host
happens to be down for a little while, that's OK -- well-behaved sender hosts
will retry deliveries for several days before giving up [9].
A situation where you may need multiple MXs is to perform load balancing
between several servers - i.e. if you receive so much mail that one machine
alone could not handle it. In this case, see if you could offload some tasks
(such as virus and spam scanners) to other machines, in order to reduce or
eliminate this need.
Again, if you do decide to keep using several MXs, your backup servers need
to be (at least) as restrictive as the primary server, lest filtering in the
primary MX is useless.
See also the section on Greylisting for additional concerns related to
multiple MX hosts.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.2. Blocking Access to Other SMTP Servers
Any SMTP server that is not listed as a public Mail Exchanger in the DNS
zone of your domain(s) should not accept incoming connections from the
internet. All incoming mail traffic should go through your incoming mail
exchanger(s).
This consideration is not unique to SMTP servers. If you have machines that
only serve an internal purpose within your site, use a firewall to restrict
access to these.
This is a rule, so therefore there must be exceptions. However, if you
don't know what they are, then the above applies to you.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.3. Forwarded Mail
You should take care not to reject mail as a result of spam filtering if it
is forwarded from "friendly" sources, such as:
  *  Your backup MX hosts, if any. Supposedly, these have already filtered
out most of the junk (see Multiple Incoming Mail Exchangers).
  *  Mailing lists, to which you or your users subscribe. You may still
filter such mail (it may not be as criticial if it ends up in a black
hole). However, if you reject the mail, you may end up causing the list
server to automatically unsubscribe the recipient.
  *  Other accounts belonging to the recipient. Again, rejections will
generate collateral spam, and/or create problems for the host that
forwards the mail.
You may see a logistical issue with the last two of these sources: They are
specific to each recipient. How to you allow each user to specify which hosts
they want to whitelist, and then use such individual whitelists in a
system-wide SMTP-time filtering setup? If the message is forwarded to several
recipients at your site (as may often be true in the case of a mailing list),
how do you decide whose whitelist to use?
There is no magic bullet here. This is one of those situations where we
just have to do a bit of work. You can decide to accept all mails, regardless
of spam classification, so long as it is sent from a host in the whitelist of
any one of the recipients. For instance, in response to each RCPT TO:
command, we can match the sending host against the corresponding user's
whitelist. If found, set a flag that will prevent a subsequent rejection.
Effectively, you are using an aggregate of each recipient's whitelist.
The implementation appendices cover this in more detail.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.4. User Settings and Data
There are other situations where you may want to support settings and data
for each user at site. For instance, if you scan incoming mail with
SpamAssassin (see Spam Scanners), you may want to allow for individual spam
thresholds, acceptable languages and character sets, and Bayesian training/
data.
A sticking point is that SMTP-time filtering of incoming mail is done at
the system level, before mail is being delivered to a particular user, and as
such, does not lend itself too well to individual preferences. A single
message may have several recipients; and unlike the case with Forwarded Mail,
using an aggregate of each recipient's preferences is not a good option.
Consider a scenario where you have users from different linguistic
backgrounds.
As it turns out, though, there is a modification to this truth. The trick
is to limit the number of recipients in incoming messages to one, so that the
message can be analyzed in accordance with the settings and data that belongs
to the corresponding user.
To do this, you would accept the first RCPT TO:, then issue a SMTP 451
(defer) response to subsequent commands. If the caller is a well-behaved MTA,
it will know how to interpret this response, and try later. (If it is
confused, then, well, it is probably a sender from which you don't want to
receive mail in the first place).
Obviously, this is a hack. Every mail sent to several users at your site
will be slowed down by 30 minutes or more per recipient. Especially in
corporate environments, where it is common to see e-mail discussions
involving several people on the inside and several others on the outside, and
where timelines of mail deliveries are essential, this is probably not a good
solution at all.
Another issue that mainly pertains to corporate enterprises and other large
sites is that incoming mail is often forwarded to internal machines for
delivery, and that recipients don't normally have accounts on the mail
exchanger. It may still be possible to support user-specific settings and
data in these situations (e.g. via database lookups or LDAP queries), but you
may also want to consider whether it's worth the effort.
That said, if you are on a small site, and where you are not afraid of
delayed deliveries, this may be an acceptable way to allow each user to fine
tune their filtering criteria.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chapter 4. Questions & Answers
In this section I try to anticipate some of the questions that may come
up, and to answer them. If you have questions that are not listed, and/or
would like to provide extra input in this section, please provide
feedback.
When Spammers Adapt
Q: What happens when spammers adapt and try to get around the techniques
described in this document?
Q: What happens when spammers adapt and try to get around the techniques
described in this document?
A: Well, that depends. :-)
Some of the checks described (such as SMTP checks and Greylisting)
specifically target ratware behavior. It is certainly possible to imagine
that this behavior will change if enough sites incorporate these checks.
Hatmut Danisch notes: Ratware contains buggy SMTP protocols because they
didn't need to do any better. It worked this way, so why should they have
spent more time? Meanwhile "ratware" has a higher quality, and even the
quality of spam messages has significantly improved. Once enough people
reject spam by detecting bad SMTP protocols, spam software authors will
simply improve their software.
That said, there are challenges remaining for such ratware:
  *  To get around SMTP transaction delays, they need to wait for each
response from the receiving SMTP server. At that point, we have
collectively accomplished a significant reduction in the rate of mail
that a given spamming host is able to deliver per unit of time. Since
spammers are racing against time to deliver as many mails as possible
before DNS blocklists and collaborative content filters catch up, we are
improving the effectiveness of these tools.
The effect is similar to the goal of Micropayment Schemes, wherein the
sender spends a few seconds working on a computational challenge for each
recipient of the mail, and adds a resulting signature to the e-mail
header for the recipient to validate. The main difference, aside from the
complexity of these schemes, is that they require the participation of
virtually everyone in the world before they can effectively be used to
weed out spam, whereas SMTP transaction delays start being effective with
the first recipient machine that implements it.
  *  To get around a HELO/EHLO check, they need to provide a proper
greeting, i.e. identify themselves with a valid Fully Qualified Domain
Name. This provides for increased traceability, especially with receiving
Mail Transport Agents that do not automatically insert the results of a
rDNS lookup into the Received: header of the message.
  *  To get all of the Sender Address Checks, they need to provide their own
valid sender address (or, at least, a valid sender address within their
own domain). Nuff said.
  *  To get around Greylisting, they need to retry deliveries to temporarily
failed recipients addresses after one hour (but before four hours). (As
far as implementation goes, in order to minimize machine resources,
rather than keeping a copy of each temporarily failed mail, ratware may
keep only a list of temporarily failed recipients, and perform a second
sweep through those addresses after an hour or two).
Even so, greylisting will remain fairly effective in conjunction with
DNS Blacklists that are fed from Spam Traps. That is because the
mandatory one-hour retry delay will give these lists a chance to list the
sending host.
Software tools, such as Spam Scanners and Virus Scanners, are in constant
evolution. As spammers evolve, so do these (and vice versa). As long as you
use recent versions of these tools, they will remain quite effective.
Finally, this document is itself subject to change. As the nature of junk
mail changes, people will come up with new, creative ways to block it.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Appendix A. Exim Implementation
Here we cover the integration of techniques and tools described in this
document into the Exim Mail Transport Agent.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A.1. Prerequisites
For these examples, you need the Exim Mail Transport Agent, preferrably
with Tom Kistner's Exiscan-ACL patch applied. Prebuilt Exim+Exiscan-ACL
packages exist for the most popular Linux distributions as well as FreeBSD;
see the [http://duncanthrax.net/exiscan-acl/] Exiscan-ACL home page for
details[14].
The final implementation example at the end incorporates these additional
tools:
  *  [http://www.spamassassin.org/] SpamAssassin - a popular spam filtering
tool that analyzes mail content against a large and highly sophisticated
set of heuristics.
  *  [http://packages.debian.org/unstable/mail/greylistd] greylistd - a
simple greylisting solution written by yours truly, specifically with
Exim in mind.
Other optional software is used in examples throughout.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A.2. The Exim Configuration File
The Exim configuration file contains global definitions at the top (we will
call this the main section), followed by several other sections[15]. Each of
these other sections starts with:
begin section
We will spend most of our time in the acl section (i.e. after begin acl);
but we will also add and/or modify a few items in the transports and routers
sections, as well as in the main section at the top of the file.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A.2.1. Access Control Lists
As of version 4.xx, Exim incorporates perhaps the most sophisticated and
flexible mechanism for SMTP-time filtering available anywhere, by way of
so-called Access Control Lists (ACLs).
An ACL can be used to evaluate whether to accept or reject an aspect of an
incoming message transaction, such as the initial connection from a remote
host, or the HELO/EHLO, MAIL FROM:, or RCPT TO: SMTP commands. So, for
instance, you may have an ACL named acl_rcpt_to to validate each RCPT TO:
command received from the peer.
An ACL consists of a series of statements (or rules). Each statement starts
with an action verb, such as accept, warn, require, defer, or deny, followed
by a list of conditions, options, and other settings pertaining to that
statement. Every statement is evaluated in order, until a definitive action
(besides warn) is taken. There is an implicit deny at the end of the ACL.
A sample statement in the acl_rcpt_to ACL above may look like this:
deny
message = relay not permitted
!hosts = +relay_from_hosts
!domains = +local_domains : +relay_to_domains
delay = 1m
This statement will reject the RCPT TO: command if it was not delivered by
a host in the "+relay_from_hosts" host list, and the recipient domain is not
in the "+local_domains" or "+relay_to_domains" domain lists. However, before
issuing the "550" SMTP response to this command, the server will wait for one
minute.
To evaluate a particular ACL at a given stage of the message transaction,
you need to point one of Exim's policy controls to that ACL. For instance, to
use the acl_rcpt_to ACL mentioned above to evaluate the RCPT TO:, the main
section of your Exim configuration file (before any begin keywords) should
include:
acl_smtp_rcpt = acl_rcpt_to
For a full list of such policy controls, refer to section 14.11 in the Exim
specifications.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A.2.2. Expansions
A large number of expansion items are available, including run-time
variables, lookup functions, string/regex manipulations, host/domain lists,
etc. etc. An exhaustive reference for the last x.x0 release (i.e. 4.20,
4.30..) can be found in the file "spec.txt"; ACLs are described in section
38.
In particular, Exim provides twenty general purpose expansion variables to
which we can assign values in an ACL statement:
  *  $acl_c0 - $acl_c9 can hold values that will persist through the
lifetime of an SMTP connection.
  *  $acl_m0 - $acl_m9 can hold values while a message is being received,
but are then reset. They are also reset by the HELO, EHLO, MAIL, and RSET
commands.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A.3. Options and Settings
The main section of the Exim configuration file (before the first begin
keyword) contains various macros, policy controls, and other general
settings. Let us start by defining a couple of macros we will use later:
# Define the message size limit; we will use this in the DATA ACL.
MESSAGE_SIZE_LIMIT = 10M
# Maximum message size for which we will run Spam or Virus scanning.
# This is to reduce the load imposed on the server by very large messages.
MESSAGE_SIZE_SPAM_MAX = 1M
# Macro defining a secret that we will use to generate various hashes.
# PLEASE CHANGE THIS!.
SECRET = some-secret
Let us tweak some general Exim settings:
# Treat DNS failures (SERVFAIL) as lookup failures.
# This is so that we can later reject sender addresses
# within non-existing domains, or domains for which no
# nameserver exists.
dns_again_means_nonexist = !+local_domains : !+relay_to_domains
# Enable HELO verification in ACLs for all hosts
helo_try_verify_hosts = *
# Remove any limitation on the maximum number of incoming
# connections we can serve at one time. This is so that while
# we later impose SMTP transaction delays for spammers, we
# will not refuse to serve new connections.
smtp_accept_max = 0
# ..unless the system load is above 10
smtp_load_reserve = 10
# Do not advertise ESMTP "PIPELINING" to any hosts.
# This is to trip up ratware, which often tries to pipeline
# commands anyway.
pipelining_advertise_hosts = :
Finally, we will point some Exim policy controls to five ACLs that we will
create to evaluate the various stages of an incoming SMTP transaction:
acl_smtp_connect = acl_connect
acl_smtp_helo = acl_helo
acl_smtp_mail = acl_mail_from
acl_smtp_rcpt = acl_rcpt_to
acl_smtp_data = acl_data
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A.4. Building the ACLs - First Pass
In the acl section (following begin acl), we need to define these ACLs. In
doing so, we will incorporate some of the basic Techniques described earlier
in this document, namely DNS checks and SMTP checks.
In this pass, we will do most of the checks in acl_rcpt_to, and leave the
other ACLs largely empty. That is because most of the commonly used ratware
does not understand rejections early in the SMTP transaction - it keeps
trying. On the other hand, most ratware clients give up if the RCPT TO:
fails.
We create all these ACLs, however, because we will use them later.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A.4.1. acl_connect
# This access control list is used at the start of an incoming
# connection. The tests are run in order until the connection
# is either accepted or denied.
acl_connect:
# In this pass, we do not perform any checks here.
accept
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A.4.2. acl_helo
# This access control list is used for the HELO or EHLO command in
# an incoming SMTP transaction. The tests are run in order until the
# greeting is either accepted or denied.
acl_helo:
# In this pass, we do not perform any checks here.
accept
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A.4.3. acl_mail_from
# This access control list is used for the MAIL FROM: command in an
# incoming SMTP transaction. The tests are run in order until the
# sender address is either accepted or denied.
#
acl_mail_from:
# Accept the command.
accept
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A.4.4. acl_rcpt_to
# This access control list is used for every RCPT command in an
# incoming SMTP message. The tests are run in order until the
# recipient address is either accepted or denied.
acl_rcpt_to:
# Accept mail received over local SMTP (i.e. not over TCP/IP).
# We do this by testing for an empty sending host field.
# Also accept mails received from hosts for which we relay mail.
#
# Recipient verification is omitted here, because in many
# cases the clients are dumb MUAs that don't cope well with
# SMTP error responses.
#
accept
hosts = : +relay_from_hosts
# Accept if the message arrived over an authenticated connection,
# from any host. Again, these messages are usually from MUAs, so
# recipient verification is omitted.
#
accept
authenticated = *
######################################################################
# DNS checks
######################################################################
#
# The results of these checks are cached, so multiple recipients
# does not translate into multiple DNS lookups.
#
# If the connecting host is in one of a select few DNSbls, then
# reject the message. Be careful when selecting these lists; many
# would cause a large number of false postives, and/or have no
# clear removal policy.
#
deny
dnslists = dnsbl.sorbs.net : \
dnsbl.njabl.org : \
cbl.abuseat.org : \
bl.spamcop.net
message = $sender_host_address is listed in $dnslist_domain\
${if def:dnslist_text { ($dnslist_text)}}
# If reverse DNS lookup of the sender's host fails (i.e. there is
# no rDNS entry, or a forward lookup of the resulting name does not
# match the original IP address), then reject the message.
#
deny
message = Reverse DNS lookup failed for host $sender_host_address.
!verify = reverse_host_lookup
######################################################################
# Hello checks
######################################################################
# If the remote host greets with an IP address, then reject the mail.
#
deny
message = Message was delivered by ratware
log_message = remote host used IP address in HELO/EHLO greeting
condition = ${if isip {$sender_helo_name}{true}{false}}
# Likewise if the peer greets with one of our own names
#
deny
message = Message was delivered by ratware
log_message = remote host used our name in HELO/EHLO greeting.
condition = ${if match_domain{$sender_helo_name}\
{$primary_hostname:+local_domains:+relay_to_domains}\
{true}{false}}
deny
message = Message was delivered by ratware
log_message = remote host did not present HELO/EHLO greeting.
condition = ${if def:sender_helo_name {false}{true}}
# If HELO verification fails, we add a X-HELO-Warning: header in
# the message.
#
warn
message = X-HELO-Warning: Remote host $sender_host_address \
${if def:sender_host_name {($sender_host_name) }}\
incorrectly presented itself as $sender_helo_name
log_message = remote host presented unverifiable HELO/EHLO greeting.
!verify = helo
######################################################################
# Sender Address Checks
######################################################################
# If we cannot verify the sender address, deny the message.
#
# You may choose to remove the "callout" option. In particular,
# if you are sending outgoing mail through a smarthost, it will not
# give any useful information.
#
# Details regarding the failed callout verification attempt are
# included in the 550 response; to omit these, change
# "sender/callout" to "sender/callout,no_details".
#
deny
message = <$sender_address> does not appear to be a \
valid sender address.
!verify = sender/callout
######################################################################
# Recipent Address Checks
######################################################################
# Deny if the local part contains @ or % or / or | or !. These are
# rarely found in genuine local parts, but are often tried by people
# looking to circumvent relaying restrictions.
#
# Also deny if the local part starts with a dot. Empty components
# aren't strictly legal in RFC 2822, but Exim allows them because
# this is common. However, actually starting with a dot may cause
# trouble if the local part is used as a file name (e.g. for a
# mailing list).
#
deny
local_parts = ^.*[@%!/|] : ^\\.
# Drop the connection if the envelope sender is empty, but there is
# more than one recipient address. Legitimate DSNs are never sent
# to more than one address.
#
drop
message = Legitimate bounces are never sent to more than one \
recipient.
senders = : postmaster@*
condition = $recipients_count
# Reject the recipient address if it is not in a domain for
# which we are handling mail.
#
deny
message = relay not permitted
!domains = +local_domains : +relay_to_domains
# Reject the recipient if it is not a valid mailbox.
# If the mailbox is not on our system (e.g. if we are a
# backup MX for the recipient domain), then perform a
# callout verification; but if the destination server is
# not responding, accept the recipient anyway.
#
deny
message = unknown user
!verify = recipient/callout=20s,defer_ok
# Otherwise, the recipient address is OK.
#
accept
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A.4.5. acl_data
# This access control list is used for message data received via
# SMTP. The tests are run in order until the recipient address
# is either accepted or denied.
acl_data:
# Add Message-ID if missing in messages received from our own hosts.
warn
condition = ${if !def:h_Message-ID: {1}}
hosts = : +relay_from_hosts
message = Message-ID: <E$message_id@$primary_hostname>
# Accept mail received over local SMTP (i.e. not over TCP/IP).
# We do this by testing for an empty sending host field.
# Also accept mails received from hosts for which we relay mail.
#
accept
hosts = : +relay_from_hosts
# Accept if the message arrived over an authenticated connection, from
# any host.
#
accept
authenticated = *
# Enforce a message-size limit
#
deny
message = Message size $message_size is larger than limit of \
MESSAGE_SIZE_LIMIT
condition = ${if >{$message_size}{MESSAGE_SIZE_LIMIT}{true}{false}}
# Deny unless the address list header is syntactically correct.
#
deny
message = Your message does not conform to RFC2822 standard
log_message = message header fail syntax check
!verify = header_syntax
# Deny non-local messages with no Message-ID, or no Date
#
# Note that some specialized MTAs, such as certain mailing list
# servers, do not automatically generate a Message-ID for bounces.
# Thus, we add the check for a non-empty sender.
#
deny
message = Your message does not conform to RFC2822 standard
log_message = missing header lines
!hosts = +relay_from_hosts
!senders = : postmaster@*
condition = ${if or {{!def:h_Message-ID:}\
{!def:h_Date:}\
{!def:h_Subject:}} {true}{false}}
# Warn unless there is a verifiable sender address in at least
# one of the "Sender:", "Reply-To:", or "From:" header lines.
#
warn
message = X-Sender-Verify-Failed: No valid sender in message header
log_message = No valid sender in message header
!verify = header_sender
# Accept the message.
#
accept
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A.5. Adding SMTP transaction delays
A.5.1. The simple way
The simplest way to add SMTP transaction delays is to append a delay
control to the final accept statement in each of the ACLs we have declared,
as follows:
accept
delay = 20s
In addition, you may want to add progressive delays in the deny statement
pertaining to invalid recipients ("unknown user") within acl_rcpt_to. This is
to slow down dictionary attacks. For instance:
deny
message = unknown user
!verify = recipient/callout=20s,defer_ok,use_sender
delay = ${eval:$rcpt_fail_count*10 + 20}s
It should be noted that there is no point in imposing a delay in acl_data,
after the message data has been received. Ratware commonly disconnect at this
point, before even receiving a response from your server. In any case,
whether or not the client disconnects at this point has no bearing on whether
Exim will proceed with the delivery of the message.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A.5.2. Selective Delays
If you are like me, you want to be a little bit more selective about which
hosts you subject to SMTP transaction delays. For instance, as described
earlier in this document, you may decide that a match from a DNS blacklist or
a non-verifiable EHLO/HELO greeting are not conditions that by themselves
warrant a rejection - but they may well be sufficient triggers for
transaction delays.
In order perform selective delays, we want move some of the checks that we
previously did in acl_rcpt_to to earlier points in the SMTP transaction. This
is so that we can start imposing the delays as soon as we see any sign of
trouble, and thereby increase the chance of causing synchronization errors
and other trouble for ratware.
Specifically, we want to:
  *  Move the DNS checks to acl_connect.
  *  Move the Hello checks to acl_helo. One exception: We cannot yet check
for a missing Hello greeting at this point, because this ACL is processed
in response to an EHLO or HELO command. We will do this check in the
acl_mail_from ACL.
  *  Move the Sender Address Checks checks to acl_mail_from.
However, for reasons described above, we do not want to actually reject the
mail until after the RCPT TO: command. Instead, in the earlier ACLs, we will
convert the various deny statements into warn statements, and use Exim's
general purpose ACL variables to store any error messages or warnings until
after the RCPT TO: command. We do that as follows:
  *  If we decide to reject the delivery, we store an error message to be
used in the forthcoming 550 response in $acl_c0 or $acl_m0:
  +  If we identify the condition before a mail delivery has started
(i.e. in acl_connect or acl_helo), we use the connection-persistent
variable $acl_c0
  +  Once a mail transaction has started (i.e. after the MAIL FROM:
command), we copy any contents from $acl_c0 into the message-specific
variable $acl_m0, and use the latter from this point forward. This
way, any conditions identified in this particular message will not
affect any subsequent messages received in the same connection.
Also, we store a corresponding log message in $acl_c1 or $acl_m1, in a
similar manner.
  *  If we come across a condition that does not warrant an outright
rejection, we only store a warning message in $acl_c1 or $acl_m1. Once a
mail transaction has started (i.e. in acl_mail_from), we add any content
in this variable to the message header as well.
  *  If we decide to accept a message without regard to the results of any
subsequent checks (such as a SpamAssassin scan), we set a flag in $acl_c0
or $acl_m0, but $acl_c1 and $acl_m1 empty.
  *  At the beginning of every ACL to and including acl_mail_from, we record
the current timestamp in $acl_m2. At the end of the ACL, we use the
presence of $acl_c1 or $acl_m1 to trigger a SMTP transaction delay until
a total of 20 seconds has elapsed.
The following table summarizes our use of these variables:
Table A-1. Use of ACL connection/message variables
+----------------+----------------------+---------------+
|Variables: |$acl_[cm]0 unset |$acl_[cm]0 set |
+----------------+----------------------+---------------+
|$acl_[cm]1 unset|(No decision yet) |Accept the mail|
+----------------+----------------------+---------------+
|$acl_[cm]1 set |Add warning in header |Reject the mail|
+----------------+----------------------+---------------+
As an example of this approach, let us consider two checks that we do in
response to the Hello greeting; one that will reject mails if the peer greets
with an IP address, and one that will warn about an unverifiable name in the
greeting. Previously, we did both of these checks in acl_rcpt_to - now we
move them to the acl_helo ACL.
acl_helo:
# Record the current timestamp, in order to calculate elapsed time
# for subsequent delays
warn
set acl_m2 = $tod_epoch
# Accept mail received over local SMTP (i.e. not over TCP/IP).
# We do this by testing for an empty sending host field.
# Also accept mails received from hosts for which we relay mail.
#
accept
hosts = : +relay_from_hosts
# If the remote host greets with an IP address, then prepare a reject
# message in $acl_c0, and a log message in $acl_c1. We will later use
# these in a "deny" statement. In the mean time, their presence indicate
# that we should keep stalling the sender.
#
warn
condition = ${if isip {$sender_helo_name}{true}{false}}
set acl_c0 = Message was delivered by ratware
set acl_c1 = remote host used IP address in HELO/EHLO greeting
# If HELO verification fails, we prepare a warning message in acl_c1.
# We will later add this message to the mail header. In the mean time,
# its presence indicates that we should keep stalling the sender.
#
warn
condition = ${if !def:acl_c1 {true}{false}}
!verify = helo
set acl_c1 = X-HELO-Warning: Remote host $sender_host_address \
${if def:sender_host_name {($sender_host_name) }}\
incorrectly presented itself as $sender_helo_name
log_message = remote host presented unverifiable HELO/EHLO greeting.
#
# ... additional checks omitted for this example ...
#
# Accept the connection, but if we previously generated a message in
# $acl_c1, stall the sender until 20 seconds has elapsed.
accept
set acl_m2 = ${if def:acl_c1 {${eval:20 + $acl_m2 - $tod_epoch}}{0}}
delay = ${if >{$acl_m2}{0}{$acl_m2}{0}}s
Then, in acl_mail_from we transfer the messages from $acl_c{0,1} to $acl_m
{0,1}. We also add the contents of $acl_c1 to the message header.
acl_mail_from:
# Record the current timestamp, in order to calculate elapsed time
# for subsequent delays
warn
set acl_m2 = $tod_epoch
# Accept mail received over local SMTP (i.e. not over TCP/IP).
# We do this by testing for an empty sending host field.
# Also accept mails received from hosts for which we relay mail.
#
accept
hosts = : +relay_from_hosts
# If present, the ACL variables $acl_c0 and $acl_c1 contain rejection
# and/or warning messages to be applied to every delivery attempt in
# in this SMTP transaction. Assign these to the corresponding
# $acl_m{0,1} message-specific variables, and add any warning message
# from $acl_m1 to the message header. (In the case of a rejection,
# $acl_m1 actually contains a log message instead, but this does not
# matter, as we will discard the header along with the message).
#
warn
set acl_m0 = $acl_c0
set acl_m1 = $acl_c1
message = $acl_c1
#
# ... additional checks omitted for this example ...
#
# Accept the sender, but if we previously generated a message in
# $acl_c1, stall the sender until 20 seconds has elapsed.
accept
set acl_m2 = ${if def:acl_c1 {${eval:20 + $acl_m2 - $tod_epoch}}{0}}
delay = ${if >{$acl_m2}{0}{$acl_m2}{0}}s
All the pertinent changes are incorporated in the Final ACLs, to follow.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A.6. Adding Greylisting Support
There are several alternate greylisting implementations available for Exim.
Here we will cover a couple of these.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A.6.1. greylistd
This is a Python implementation developed by yours truly. (So naturally,
this is the implementation I will include in the Final ACLs to follow). It
operates as a stand-alone daemon, and thus does not depend on any external
database. Greylist data is stored as simple 32-bit hashes for efficiency.
You can find it at [http://packages.debian.org/unstable/mail/greylistd]
http://packages.debian.org/unstable/mail/greylistd. Debian users can get it
via APT:
# apt-get install greylistd
To consult greylistd, we insert two statements in acl_rcpt_to ACL that we
previously declared, right before the final accept statement:
# Consult "greylistd" to obtain greylisting status for this particular
# peer/sender/recipient triplet.
#
# We do not greylist messages with a NULL sender, because sender
# callout verification would break (and we might not be able to
# send mail to a host that performs callouts).
#
defer
message = $sender_host_address is not yet authorized to deliver mail \
from <$sender_address> to <$local_part@$domain>. \
Please try later.
log_message = greylisted.
domains = +local_domains : +relay_to_domains
!senders = : postmaster@*
set acl_m9 = $sender_host_address $sender_address $local_part@$domain
set acl_m9 = ${readsocket{/var/run/greylistd/socket}{$acl_m9}{5s}{}{}}
condition = ${if eq {$acl_m9}{grey}{true}{false}}
Unless you incorporate envelope sender signatures to block bogus Delivery
Status Notifications, you may want to add a similar statement in your
acl_data to also greylist messages with a NULL sender.
The data we use for greylisting purposes here will be a little different
than above. In addition to $sender_address being emtpy, neither $local_part
nor $domain is defined at this point. Instead, the variable $recipients
contains a comma-separated list of all recipient addresses. For a legitimate
DSN, there should be only one address.
# Perform greylisting on messages with no envelope sender here.
# We did not subject these to greylisting after RCPT TO: because
# that would interfere with remote hosts doing sender callouts.
#
defer
message = $sender_host_address is not yet authorized to send \
delivery status reports to <$recipients>. \
Please try later.
log_message = greylisted.
senders = : postmaster@*
set acl_m9 = $sender_host_address $recipients
set acl_m9 = ${readsocket{/var/run/greylistd/socket}{$acl_m9}{5s}{}{}}
condition = ${if eq {$acl_m9}{grey}{true}{false}}
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A.6.2. MySQL implementation
The following inline implementation was contributed by Johannes Berg <
johannes (at) sipsolutions.net>, based in part on:
  *  work by Rick Stewart <rick.stewart (at) theinternetco.net>, published
at [http://theinternetco.net/projects/exim/greylist] http://
theinternetco.net/projects/exim/greylist, in turn based on
  *  a Postgres implementation created by Tollef Fog Heen <tfheen (at)
raw.no>, available at [http://raw.no/personal/blog/tech/Debian/
2004-03-14-15-55_greylisting] http://raw.no/personal/blog/tech/Debian/
2004-03-14-15-55_greylisting
It requires no external programs - the entire implementation is based on
these configuration snippets along with a MySQL database.
An archive containing up-to-date configuration snippets as well as a README
file is available at: [http://johannes.sipsolutions.net/wiki/Projects/
exim-greylist] http://johannes.sipsolutions.net/wiki/Projects/exim-greylist.
MySQL needs to be installed on your system. At a MySQL prompt, create an
exim4 database with two tables named exim_greylist and exim_greylist_log, as
follows:
CREATE DATABASE exim4;
use exim4;
CREATE TABLE exim_greylist (
id bigint(20) NOT NULL auto_increment,
relay_ip varchar(80) default NULL,
sender varchar(255) default NULL,
recipient varchar(255) default NULL,
block_expires datetime NOT NULL default '0000-00-00 00:00:00',
record_expires datetime NOT NULL default '9999-12-31 23:59:59',
create_time datetime NOT NULL default '0000-00-00 00:00:00',
type enum('AUTO','MANUAL') NOT NULL default 'MANUAL',
passcount bigint(20) NOT NULL default '0',
blockcount bigint(20) NOT NULL default '0',
PRIMARY KEY (id)
);
CREATE TABLE exim_greylist_log (
id bigint(20) NOT NULL auto_increment,
listid bigint(20) NOT NULL,
timestamp datetime NOT NULL default '0000-00-00 00:00:00',
kind enum('deferred', 'accepted') NOT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (id)
);
In the main section of your Exim configuration file, declare the following
macros:
# if you don't have another database defined, then define it here
hide mysql_servers = localhost/exim4/user/password
# options
# these need to be valid as xxx in mysql's DATE_ADD(..,INTERVAL xxx)
# not valid, for example, are plurals: "2 HOUR" instead of "2 HOURS"
GREYLIST_INITIAL_DELAY = 1 HOUR
GREYLIST_INITIAL_LIFETIME = 4 HOUR
GREYLIST_WHITE_LIFETIME = 36 DAY
GREYLIST_BOUNCE_LIFETIME = 0 HOUR
# you can change the table names
GREYLIST_TABLE=exim_greylist
GREYLIST_LOG_TABLE=exim_greylist_log
# comment out to the following line to disable greylisting (temporarily)
GREYLIST_ENABLED=
# uncomment the following to enable logging
#GREYLIST_LOG_ENABLED=
# below here, nothing should normally be edited
.ifdef GREYLIST_ENABLED
# database macros
GREYLIST_TEST = SELECT CASE \
WHEN now() > block_expires THEN "accepted" \
ELSE "deferred" \
END AS result, id \
FROM GREYLIST_TABLE \
WHERE (now() < record_expires) \
AND (sender = '${quote_mysql:$sender_address}' \
OR (type='MANUAL' \
AND ( sender IS NULL \
OR sender = '${quote_mysql:@$sender_address_domain}' \
) \
) \
) \
AND (recipient = '${quote_mysql:$local_part@$domain}' \
OR (type = 'MANUAL' \
AND ( recipient IS NULL \
OR recipient = '${quote_mysql:$local_part@}' \
OR recipient = '${quote_mysql:@$domain}' \
) \
) \
) \
AND (relay_ip = '${quote_mysql:$sender_host_address}' \
OR (type='MANUAL' \
AND ( relay_ip IS NULL \
OR relay_ip = substring('${quote_mysql:$sender_host_address}',1,length(relay_ip)) \
) \
) \
) \
ORDER BY result DESC LIMIT 1
GREYLIST_ADD = INSERT INTO GREYLIST_TABLE \
(relay_ip, sender, recipient, block_expires, \
record_expires, create_time, type) \
VALUES ( '${quote_mysql:$sender_host_address}', \
'${quote_mysql:$sender_address}', \
'${quote_mysql:$local_part@$domain}', \
DATE_ADD(now(), INTERVAL GREYLIST_INITIAL_DELAY), \
DATE_ADD(now(), INTERVAL GREYLIST_INITIAL_LIFETIME), \
now(), \
'AUTO' \
)
GREYLIST_DEFER_HIT = UPDATE GREYLIST_TABLE \
SET blockcount=blockcount+1 \
WHERE id = $acl_m9
GREYLIST_OK_COUNT = UPDATE GREYLIST_TABLE \
SET passcount=passcount+1 \
WHERE id = $acl_m9
GREYLIST_OK_NEWTIME = UPDATE GREYLIST_TABLE \
SET record_expires = DATE_ADD(now(), INTERVAL GREYLIST_WHITE_LIFETIME) \
WHERE id = $acl_m9 AND type='AUTO'
GREYLIST_OK_BOUNCE = UPDATE GREYLIST_TABLE \
SET record_expires = DATE_ADD(now(), INTERVAL GREYLIST_BOUNCE_LIFETIME) \
WHERE id = $acl_m9 AND type='AUTO'
GREYLIST_LOG = INSERT INTO GREYLIST_LOG_TABLE \
(listid, timestamp, kind) \
VALUES ($acl_m9, now(), '$acl_m8')
.endif
Now, in the ACL section (after begin acl), declare a new ACL named
"greylist_acl":
.ifdef GREYLIST_ENABLED
# this acl returns either deny or accept
# since we use it inside a defer with acl = greylist_acl,
# accepting here makes the condition TRUE thus deferring,
# denying here makes the condition FALSE thus not deferring
greylist_acl:
# For regular deliveries, check greylist.
# check greylist tuple, returning "accepted", "deferred" or "unknown"
# in acl_m8, and the record id in acl_m9
warn set acl_m8 = ${lookup mysql{GREYLIST_TEST}{$value}{result=unknown}}
# here acl_m8 = "result=x id=y"
set acl_m9 = ${extract{id}{$acl_m8}{$value}{-1}}
# now acl_m9 contains the record id (or -1)
set acl_m8 = ${extract{result}{$acl_m8}{$value}{unknown}}
# now acl_m8 contains unknown/deferred/accepted
# check if we know a certain triple, add and defer message if not
accept
# if above check returned unknown (no record yet)
condition = ${if eq{$acl_m8}{unknown}{1}}
# then also add a record
condition = ${lookup mysql{GREYLIST_ADD}{yes}{no}}
# now log, no matter what the result was
# if the triple was unknown, we don't need a log entry
# (and don't get one) because that is implicit through
# the creation time above.
.ifdef GREYLIST_LOG_ENABLED
warn condition = ${lookup mysql{GREYLIST_LOG}}
.endif
# check if the triple is still blocked
accept
# if above check returned deferred then defer
condition = ${if eq{$acl_m8}{deferred}{1}}
# and note it down
condition = ${lookup mysql{GREYLIST_DEFER_HIT}{yes}{yes}}
# use a warn verb to count records that were hit
warn condition = ${lookup mysql{GREYLIST_OK_COUNT}}
# use a warn verb to set a new expire time on automatic records,
# but only if the mail was not a bounce, otherwise set to now().
warn !senders = : postmaster@*
condition = ${lookup mysql{GREYLIST_OK_NEWTIME}}
warn senders = : postmaster@*
condition = ${lookup mysql{GREYLIST_OK_BOUNCE}}
deny
.endif
Incorporate this ACL into your acl_rcpt_to to greylist triplets where the
sender address is non-empty. This is to allow for sender callout
verifications:
.ifdef GREYLIST_ENABLED
defer !senders = : postmaster@*
acl = greylist_acl
message = greylisted - try again later
.endif
Also incorporate it into your acl_data block, but this time only if the
sender address is empty. This is to prevent spammers from getting around
greylisting by setting the sender address to NULL.
.ifdef GREYLIST_ENABLED
defer senders = : postmaster@*
acl = greylist_acl
message = greylisted - try again later
.endif
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A.7. Adding SPF Checks
Here we cover two different ways to check Sender Policy Framework records
using Exim. In addition to these explicit mechanisms, the SpamAssassin suite
will in the near future (around version 2.70) incorporate more sophisticated
SPF checks, by assigning weighted scores to the various SPF results.
Although we could perform this check as early as in the acl_mail_from ACL,
there is an issue that will affect this decision: SPF is incompatible with
traditional e-mail forwarding. Unless the forwarding host implements [http://
spf.pobox.com/srs.html] SRS, you may end up rejecting forwarded mail because
you receive it from a host that is not authorized to do so per the SPF policy
of the domain in the Envelope Sender address.
To avoid doing this, we need to consult a user-specific list of hosts from
which forwarded mails should be accepted (as described in Exempting Forwarded
Mail, to follow). This is only possible after the RCPT TO:, when we know the
username of the recipient.
As such, we will add this check prior to any greylisting checks and/or the
final accept statement in acl_rcpt_to.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A.7.1. SPF checks via Exiscan-ACL
Recent versions of Tom Kistner's Exiscan-ACL patch (see Prerequisites) have
native support for SPF. [16] Usage is very simple. An spf ACL condition is
added, and can be compared against any of the keywords pass, fail, softfail,
none, neutral, err_perm or err_temp.
Prior to any greylisting checks and/or the final accept statement in
acl_rcpt_to, insert the following snippet:
# Query the SPF information for the sender address domain, if any,
# to see if the sending host is authorized to deliver its mail.
# If not, reject the mail.
#
deny
message = [SPF] $sender_host_address is not allowed to send mail \
from $sender_address_domain
log_message = SPF check failed.
spf = fail
# Add a SPF-Received: header to the message
warn
message = $spf_received
This statement will reject the mail if the owner of the domain in the
sender address has disallowed deliveries from the calling host. Some people
find that this gives the domain owner a little bit too much control, even to
the point of shooting themselves in the foot. A suggested alternative is to
combine the SPF check with other checks, such as Sender Callout Verification
(but note that as before, there is no point in doing this if you are sending
your outgoing mail through a smarthost):
# Reject the mail if we cannot verify the sender address via callouts,
# and if SPF information for the sending domain does not grant explicit
# authority to the sending host.
#
deny
message = The sender address does not seem to be valid, and SPF \
information does not grant $sender_host_address explicit \
authority to send mail from $sender_address_domain
log_message = SPF check failed.
!verify = sender/callout,random,postmaster
!spf = pass
# Add a SPF-Received: header to the message
warn
message = $spf_received
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A.7.2. SPF checks via Mail::SPF::Query
Mail::SPF::Query is a the official SPF test suite, available from [http://
spf.pobox.com/downloads.html] http://spf.pobox.com/downloads.html. Debian
users, install libmail-spf-query-perl.
The Mail::SPF::Query package comes with a daemon (spfd) that listens for
requests on a UNIX domain socket. Unfortunately, it does not come with an
"init" script to start this daemon automatically. Therefore, in the following
example, we will use the standalone spfquery utility to make our SPF
requests.
As above, insert the following prior to any greylisting checks and/or the
final accept statement in acl_rcpt_to:
# Use "spfquery" to obtain SPF status for this particular sender/host.
# If the return code of that command is 1, this is an unauthorized sender.
#
deny
message = [SPF] $sender_host_address is not allowed to send mail \
from $sender_address_domain.
log_message = SPF check failed.
set acl_m9 = -ipv4=$sender_host_address \
-sender=$sender_address \
-helo=$sender_helo_name
set acl_m9 = ${run{/usr/bin/spfquery $acl_m9}}
condition = ${if eq {$runrc}{1}{true}{false}}
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A.8. Adding MIME and Filetype Checks
These checks depend on features found in Tom Kistner's Exiscan-ACL patch -
see Prerequisites for details.
Exiscan-ACL includes support for MIME decoding, and file name suffix checks
(or to use a misnomer from the Windows world, "file extension" checks). This
check alone will block most Windows virii - but not those that are
transmitted in .ZIP archives or those that exploit Outlook/MSIE HTML
rendering vulnerabilities - see the discussion on Virus Scanners.
These checks should go into acl_data, before the final accept statement:
# Reject messages that have serious MIME errors.
#
deny
message = Serious MIME defect detected ($demime_reason)
demime = *
condition = ${if >{$demime_errorlevel}{2}{1}{0}}
# Unpack MIME containers and reject file extensions used by worms.
# This calls the demime condition again, but it will return cached results.
# Note that the extension list may be incomplete.
#
deny
message = We do not accept ".$found_extension" attachments here.
demime = bat:btm:cmd:com:cpl:dll:exe:lnk:msi:pif:prf:reg:scr:vbs:url
You will note that the demime condition is invoked twice in the example
above. However, the results are cached, so the message is not actually
processed twice.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A.9. Adding Anti-Virus Software
Exiscan-ACL plugs into a number of different virus scanners directly, or
any other scanner that can be run from the command line via its cmdline
backend.
To use this feature, the main section of your Exim configuration file must
specify which virus scanner to use, along with any options you wish to pass
to that scanner. The basic syntax is:
av_scanner = scanner-type:option1:option:...
For instance:
av_scanner = sophie:/var/run/sophie
av_scanner = kavdaemon:/opt/AVP/AvpCtl
av_scanner = clamd:127.0.0.1 1234
av_scanner = clamd:/opt/clamd/socket
av_scanner = cmdline:/path/to/sweep -all -rec -archive %s:found:'(.+)'
...
In the DATA ACL, you then want to use the malware condition to perform the
actual scanning:
deny
message = This message contains a virus ($malware_name)
demime = *
malware = */defer_ok
The included file exiscan-acl-spec.txt contains full usage information.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A.10. Adding SpamAssassin
Invoking SpamAssassin at SMTP-time is commonly done in either of two ways
in Exim:
  *  Via the spam condition offered by Exiscan-ACL. This is the mechanism we
will cover here.
  *  Via SA-Exim, another utility written by Marc Merlins (<marc (at)
merlins.org>), specifically for running SpamAssassin at SMTP time in
Exim. This program operates through Exim's local_scan() interface, either
patched directly into the Exim source code, or via Marc's own dlopen()
plugin (which, by the way, is included in Debian's exim4-daemon-light and
exim4-daemon-heavy packages).
SA-Exim offers some other features as well, namely greylisting and
teergrubing. However, because the scan happens after the message data has
been received, neither of these two features may be as useful as they
would be earlier in the SMTP transaction.
SA-Exim can be found at: [http://marc.merlins.org/linux/exim/sa.html]
http://marc.merlins.org/linux/exim/sa.html.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A.10.1. Invoke SpamAssassin via Exiscan
Exiscan-ACL's "spam" condition passes the message through either
SpamAssassin or Brightmail, and triggers if these indicate that the message
is junk. By default, it connects to a SpamAssassin daemon (spamd) running on
localhost. The host address and port can be changed by adding a spamd_address
setting in the main section of the Exim configuration file. For more
information, see the exiscan-acl-spect.txt file included with the patch.
In our implementation, we are going to reject messages classified as spam.
However, we would like to keep a copy of such messages in a separate mail
folder, at least for the time being. This is so that the user can
periodically scan for False Positives.
Exim offers controls that can be applied to a message that is accepted,
such as freeze. The Exiscan-ACL patch adds one more of these controls, namely
fakereject. This causes the following SMTP response:
550-FAKEREJECT id=message-id
550-Your message has been rejected but is being kept for evaluation.
550 If it was a legit message, it may still be delivered to the target recipient(s).
We can incorporate this feature into our implementation, by inserting the
following snippet in acl_data, prior to the final accept statement:
# Invoke SpamAssassin to obtain $spam_score and $spam_report.
# Depending on the classification, $acl_m9 is set to "ham" or "spam".
#
# If the message is classified as spam, pretend to reject it.
#
warn
set acl_m9 = ham
spam = mail
set acl_m9 = spam
control = fakereject
logwrite = :reject: Rejected spam (score $spam_score): $spam_report
# Add an appropriate X-Spam-Status: header to the message.
#
warn
message = X-Spam-Status: \
${if eq {$acl_m9}{spam}{Yes}{No}} (score $spam_score)\
${if def:spam_report {: $spam_report}}
logwrite = :main: Classified as $acl_m9 (score $spam_score)
In this example, $acl_m9 is initially set to "ham". Then SpamAssassin is
invoked as the user mail. If the message is classified as spam, then $acl_m9
is set to "spam", and the FAKEREJECT response above is issued. Finally, an
X-Spam-Status: header is added to the message. The idea is that the Mail
Delivery Agent or the recipient's Mail User Agent can use this header to
filter junk mail into a separate folder.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A.10.2. Configure SpamAssassin
By default, SpamAssassin presents its report in a verbose, table-like
format, mainly suitable for inclusion in or attachment to the message body.
In our case, we want a terse report, suitable for the X-Spam-Status: header
in the example above. To do this, we add the following snippet in its site
specific configuration file (/etc/spamassassin/local.cf, /etc/mail/
spamassassin/local.cf, or similar):
### Report template
clear_report_template
report "_TESTSSCORES(, )_"
Also, a Bayesian scoring feature is built in, and is turned on by default.
We normally want to turn this off, because it requires training that will be
specific to each user, and thus is not suitable for system-wide SMTP time
filtering:
### Disable Bayesian scoring
use_bayes 0
For these changes to take effect, you have to restart the SpamAssassin
daemon (spamd).
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A.10.3. User Settings and Data
Say you have a number of users that want to specify their individual
SpamAssassin preferences, such as the spam threshold, acceptable languages
and character sets, white/blacklisted senders, and so on. Or perhaps they
really want to be able to make use of SpamAssassin's native Bayesian scoring
(though I don't see why[17]).
As discussed in the User Settings and Data section earlier in the document,
there is a way for this to happen. We need to limit the number of recipients
we accept per incoming mail delivery to one. We accept the first RCPT TO:
command issued by the caller, then defer subsequent ones using a 451 SMTP
response. As with greylisting, if the caller is a well-behaved MTA it will
know how to interpret this response, and retry later.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A.10.3.1. Tell Exim to accept only one recipient per delivery
In the acl_rcpt_to, we insert the following statement after validating the
recipient address, but before any accept statements pertaining to
unauthenticated deliveries from remote hosts to local users (i.e. before any
greylist checks, envelope signature checks, etc):
# Limit the number of recipients in each incoming message to one
# to support per-user settings and data (e.g. for SpamAssassin).
#
# NOTE: Every mail sent to several users at your site will be
# delayed for 30 minutes or more per recipient. This
# significantly slow down the pace of discussion threads
# involving several internal and external parties.
#
defer
message = We only accept one recipient at a time - please try later.
condition = $recipients_count
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A.10.3.2. Pass the recipient username to SpamAssassin
In acl_data, we modify the spam condition given in the previous section, so
that it passes on to SpamAssassin the username specified in the local part of
the recipient address.
# Invoke SpamAssassin to obtain $spam_score and $spam_report.
# Depending on the classification, $acl_m9 is set to "ham" or "spam".
#
# We pass on the username specified in the recipient address,
# i.e. the portion before any '=' or '@' character, converted
# to lowercase. Multiple recipients should not occur, since
# we previously limited delivery to one recipient at a time.
#
# If the message is classified as spam, pretend to reject it.
#
warn
set acl_m9 = ham
spam = ${lc:${extract{1}{=@}{$recipients}{$value}{mail}}}
set acl_m9 = spam
control = fakereject
logwrite = :reject: Rejected spam (score $spam_score): $spam_report
Note that instead of using Exim's ${local_part:...} function to get the
username, we manually extracted the portion before any "@" or "=" character.
This is because we will use the latter character in our envelope signature
scheme, to follow.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A.10.3.3. Enable per-user settings in SpamAssassin
Let us now again look at SpamAssassin. First of all, you may choose to
remove the use_bayes 0 setting that we previously added in its site-wide
configuration file. In any case, each user will now have the ability to
decide whether to override this setting for themselves.
If mailboxes on your system map directly to local UNIX accounts with home
directories, you are done. By default, the SpamAssassin daemon (spamd)
performs a setuid() to the username we pass to it, and stores user data and
settings in that user's home directory.
If this is not the case (for instance, if your mail accounts are managed by
Cyrus SASL or by another server), you need to tell SpamAssassin where to find
each user's preferences and data files. Also, spamd needs to keep running as
a specific local user instead of attempting to setuid() to a non-existing
user.
We do these things by specifying the options passed to spamd at startup:
  *  On a Debian system, edit the OPTIONS= setting in /etc/default/
spamassassin.
  *  On a RedHat system, edit the SPAMDOPTIONS= setting in /etc/sysconfig/
spamassassin.
  *  Others, figure it out.
The options you need are:
  *  -u username - specify the user under which spamd will run (e.g. mail)
  *  -x - disable configuration files in user's home directory.
  *  --virtual-config-dir=/var/lib/spamassassin/%u - specify where per-user
settings and data are stored. "%u" is replaced with the calling username.
spamd must be able to create or modify this directory:
# mkdir /var/lib/spamassassin
# chown -R mail:mail /var/lib/spamassassin
Needless to say, after making these changes, you need to restart spamd.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A.11. Adding Envelope Sender Signatures
Here we implement Envelope Sender Signature in our outgoing mail, and check
for these signatures before accepting incoming "bounces" (i.e. mail with no
envelope sender).
The envelope sender address of outgoing mails from your host will be
modified as follows:
sender=recipient=recipient.domain=hash@sender.domain
However, because this scheme may produce unintended consequences (e.g. in
the case of mailing list servers), we make it optional for your users. We
sign the envelope sender address of outgoing mail only if we find a file
named ".return-path-sign" in the sender's home directory, and only if the
domain we are sending to is matched in that file. If the file exists, but is
empty, all domains match.
Similarly, we only require the recipient address to be signed in incoming
"bounce" messages (i.e. messages with no envelope sender) if the same file
exists in recipient's home directory. Users can exempt specific hosts from
this check via their user specific whitelist, as described in Exempting
Forwarded Mail.
Also, because this scheme involves tweaking with routers and transports in
addition to ACLs, we do not include it in the Final ACLs to follow. If you
are able to follow the instructions pertaining to those sections, you should
also be able to add the ACL section as described here.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A.11.1. Create a Transport to Sign the Sender Address
First we create an Exim transport that will be used to sign the envelope
sender for remote deliveries:
remote_smtp_signed:
debug_print = "T: remote_smtp_signed for $local_part@$domain"
driver = smtp
max_rcpt = 1
return_path = $sender_address_local_part=$local_part=$domain=\
${hash_8:${hmac{md5}{SECRET}{${lc:\
$sender_address_local_part=$local_part=$domain}}}}\
@$sender_address_domain
The "local part" of the sender address now consists of the following
components, separated by equal signs ("="):
  *  the sender's username, i.e. the original local part,
  *  the local part of the recipient address,
  *  the domain part of the recipient address,
  *  a string unique to this sender/recipient combination, generated by:
  +  encrypting the three prior components of the rewritten sender
address, using Exim's ${hmac{md5}...} function along with the SECRET
we declared in the main section, [18]
  +  hashing the result into 8 lowercase letters, using Exim's $
{hash...} function.
If you need authentication for deliveries to "smarthosts", add an
appropriate hosts_try_auth line here as well. (Take it from your existing
smarthost transport).
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A.11.2. Create a New Router for Remote Deliveries
Add a new router prior to the existing router(s) that currently handles
your outgoing mail. This router will use the transport above for remote
deliveries, but only if the file ".return-path-sign" exists in the sender's
home directory, and if the recipient's domain is matched in that file. For
instance, if you send mail directly over the internet to the final
destination:
# Sign the envelope sender address (return path) for deliveries to
# remote domains if the sender's home directory contains the file
# ".return-path-sign", and if the remote domain is matched in that
# file. If the file exists, but is empty, the envelope sender
# address is always signed.
#
dnslookup_signed:
debug_print = "R: dnslookup_signed for $local_part@$domain"
driver = dnslookup
transport = remote_smtp_signed
senders = ! : *
domains = ! +local_domains : !+relay_to_domains : \
${if exists {/home/$sender_address_local_part/.return-path-sign}\
{/home/$sender_address_local_part/.return-path-sign}\
{!*}}
no_more
Or if you use a smarthost:
# Sign the envelope sender address (return path) for deliveries to
# remote domains if the sender's home directory contains the file
# ".return-path-sign", and if the remote domain is matched in that
# file. If the file exists, but is empty, the envelope sender
# address is always signed.
#
smarthost_signed:
debug_print = "R: smarthost_signed for $local_part@$domain"
driver = manualroute
transport = remote_smtp_signed
senders = ! : *
route_list = * smarthost.address
host_find_failed = defer
domains = ! +local_domains : !+relay_to_domains : \
${if exists {/home/$sender_address_local_part/.return-path-sign}\
{/home/$sender_address_local_part/.return-path-sign}\
{!*}}
no_more
Add other options as you see fit (e.g. same_domain_copy_routing = yes),
perhaps modelled after your existing routers.
Note that we do not use this router for mails with no envelope sender
address - we wouldn't want to tamper with those! [19]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A.11.3. Create New Redirect Router for Local Deliveries
Next, you need to tell Exim that incoming recipient addresses that match
the format above should be delivered to the mailbox identified by the portion
before the first equal ("=") sign. For this purpose, you want to insert a
redirect router early in the routers section of your configuration file -
before any other routers pertaining to local deliveries (such as a system
alias router):
hashed_local:
debug_print = "R: hashed_local for $local_part@$domain"
driver = redirect
domains = +local_domains
local_part_suffix = =*
data = $local_part@$domain
Recipient addresses that contain a equal sign are rewritten such that the
portion of the local part that follows the equal sign are stripped off. Then
all routers are processed again.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A.11.4. ACL Signature Check
The final part of this scheme is to tell Exim that mails delivered to valid
recipient addresses with this signature should always be accepted, and that
other messages with a NULL envelope sender should be rejected if the
recipient has opted in to this scheme. No greylisting should be done in
either case.
The following snippet should be placed in acl_rcpt_to, prior to any SPF
checks, greylisting, and/or the final accept statement:
# Accept the recipient addresss if it contains our own signature.
# This means this is a response (DSN, sender callout verification...)
# to a message that was previously sent from here.
#
accept
domains = +local_domains
condition = ${if and {{match{${lc:$local_part}}{^(.*)=(.*)}}\
{eq{${hash_8:${hmac{md5}{SECRET}{$1}}}}{$2}}}\
{true}{false}}
# Otherwise, if this message claims to be a bounce (i.e. if there
# is no envelope sender), but if the receiver has elected to use
# and check against envelope sender signatures, reject it.
#
deny
message = This address does not match a valid, signed \
return path from here.\n\
You are responding to a forged sender address.
log_message = bogus bounce.
senders = : postmaster@*
domains = +local_domains
set acl_m9 = /home/${extract{1}{=}{${lc:$local_part}}}/.return-path-sign
condition = ${if exists {$acl_m9}{true}}
You will have an issue when sending mail to hosts that perform callout
verification on addresses in the message header, such as the one provided in
the From: field of your outgoing mail. The deny statement here will
effectively give a negative response to such a verification attempt.
For that reason, you may want to convert the last deny statement into a
warn statement, store the rejection message in $acl_m0, and perform the
actual rejection after the DATA command, in a fashion similar to previously
described:
# Otherwise, if this message claims to be a bounce (i.e. if there
# is no envelope sender), but if the receiver has elected to use
# and check against envelope sender signatures, store a reject
# message in $acl_m0, and a log message in $acl_m1. We will later
# use these to reject the mail. In the mean time, their presence
# indicate that we should keep stalling the sender.
#
warn
senders = : postmaster@*
domains = +local_domains
set acl_m9 = /home/${extract{1}{=}{${lc:$local_part}}}/.return-path-sign
condition = ${if exists {$acl_m9}{true}}
set acl_m0 = The recipient address <$local_part@$domain> does not \
match a valid, signed return path from here.\n\
You are responding to a forged sender address.
set acl_m1 = bogus bounce for <$local_part@$domain>.
Also, even if the recipient has chosen to use envelope sender signatures in
their outgoing mail, they may want to exempt specific hosts from having to
provide this signature in incoming mail, even if the mail has no envelope
sender address. This may be required for specific mailing list servers, see
the discussion on Envelope Sender Signature for details.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A.12. Accept Bounces Only for Real Users
As discussed in Accept Bounces Only for Real Users, there is now a loophole
that prevents us from catching bogus Delivery Status Notification sent to
system users and aliases, such as postmaster. Here we cover two alternate
ways to ensure that bounces are only accepted for users that actually send
outgoing mail.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A.12.1. Check for Recipient Mailbox
The first method is performed in the acl_rcpt_to ACL. Here, we check that
the recipient address corresponds to a local mailbox:
# Deny mail for users that do not have a mailbox (i.e. postmaster,
# webmaster...) if no sender address is provided. These users do
# not send outgoing mail, so they should not receive returned mail.
#
deny
message = This address never sends outgoing mail. \
You are responding to a forged sender address.
log_message = bogus bounce for system user <$local_part@$domain>
senders = : postmaster@*
domains = +local_domains
!mailbox check
Unfortunately, how we perform the mailbox check will depend on how you
deliver your mail (as before, we extract the portion before the first "="
sign of the recipient address, to accomodate for Envelope Sender Signatures):
  *  If mailboxes map to local user accounts on your server, we can check
that the recipient name maps to a user ID that corresponds to "regular"
users on your system, e.g. in the range 500 - 60000:
set acl_m9 = ${extract{1}{=}{${lc:$local_part}}}
set acl_m9 = ${extract{2}{:}{${lookup passwd {$acl_m9}{$value}}}{0}}
condition = ${if and {{>={$acl_m9}{500}} {<${acl_m9}{60000}}} {true}}
  *  If you deliver mail to the [http://asg.web.cmu.edu/cyrus/] Cyrus IMAP
suite, you can use the provided mbpath command-line utility to check that
the mailbox exists. You will want to make sure that the Exim user has
permission to check for mailboxes (for instance, you may add it to the
cyrus group: # adduser exim4 cyrus).
set acl_m9 = ${extract{1}{=}{${lc:$local_part}}}
condition = ${run {/usr/sbin/mbpath -q -s user.$acl_m9} {true}}
  *  If you forward all mail to a remote machine for delivery, you may need
to perform a Recipient Callout Verification and let that machine decide
whether to accept the mail. You need to keep the original envelope sender
intact in the callout:
verify = recipient/callout=use_sender
Since in the case of locally delivered mail, this mailbox check duplicates
some of the logic that is performed in the routers, and since it is specific
to the mail delivery mechanism on our site, it is perhaps a bit kludgy for
the perfectionists among us. So we will now provide an alternate way.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A.12.2. Check for Empty Sender in Aliases Router
You probably have a router named system_aliases or similar, to redirect
mail for users such as postmaster and mailer-demon. Typically, these aliases
are not used in the sender address of outgoing mail. As such, you can ensure
that incoming Delivery Status Notifications are not routed through it by
adding the following condition to the router:
!senders = : postmaster@*
A sample aliases router may now look like this:
system_aliases:
driver = redirect
domains = +local_domains
!senders = : postmaster@*
allow_fail
allow_defer
data = ${lookup{$local_part}lsearch{/etc/aliases}}
user = mail
group = mail
file_transport = address_file
pipe_transport = address_pipe
Although we now block bounces to some system aliases, other aliases were
merely shadowing existing system users (such as "root", "daemon", etc). If
you deliver local mail through the the accept driver, and use
check_local_user to validate the recipient address, you may now find yourself
routing mail directly to these system accounts.
To fix this problem, we now want to add an additional condition in the
router that handles your local mail (e.g. local_user) to ensure that the
recipient not only exists, but is a "regular" user. For instance, as above,
we can check that the user ID is in the range 500 - 60000:
condition = ${if and {{>={$local_user_uid}{500}}\
{<{$local_user_uid}{60000}}}\
{true}}
A sample router for local delivery may now look like this:
local_user:
driver = accept
domains = +local_domains
check_local_user
condition = ${if and {{>={$local_user_uid}{500}}\
{<{$local_user_uid}{60000}}}\
{true}}
transport = transport
Beware that if you implement this method, the reject response from your
server in response to bogus bounce mail for system users will be the same as
for unknown recipients (550 Unknown User in our case).
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A.13. Exempting Forwarded Mail
After adding all these checks in the SMTP transaction, we may find
ourselves indirectly creating collateral spam as a result of rejecting mails
forwarded from trusted sources, such as mailing lists and mail accounts on
other sites (see the discussion on Forwarded Mail for details). We now need
to whitelist these hosts in order to exempt them from SMTP rejections -- at
least those rejections that are caused by our spam and/or virus filtering.
In this example, we will consult two files in response to each RCPT TO:
command:
  *  A global whitelist in /etc/mail/whitelist-hosts, containing backup MX
hosts and other whitelisted senders [9], and
  *  A user-specific list in /home/user/.forwarders, specifying hosts from
which that particuar user will receive forwarded mail (e.g. mailing list
servers, outgoing mail servers for accounts elsewhere...)
If your mail users do not have local user accounts and home directories,
you may want to modify the file paths and/or lookup mechanisms to something
more suitable for your system (e.g. database lookups or LDAP queries).
If the sender host is found in one of these whitelists, we save the word
"accept" in $acl_m0, and clear the contents of $acl_m1, as described in the
previous section on Selective Delays. This will indicate that we should not
reject the mail in subsequent statements.
In the acl_rcpt_to, we insert the following statement after validating the
recipient address, but before any accept statements pertaining to
unauthenticated deliveries from remote hosts to local users (i.e. before any
greylist checks, envelope signature checks, etc):
# Accept the mail if the sending host is matched in the global
# whitelist file. Temporarily set $acl_m9 to point to this file.
# If the host is found, set a flag in $acl_m0 and clear $acl_m1 to
# indicate that we should not reject this mail later.
#
accept
set acl_m9 = /etc/mail/whitelist-hosts
hosts = ${if exists {$acl_m9}{$acl_m9}}
set acl_m0 = accept
set acl_m1 =
# Accept the mail if the sending host is matched in the ".forwarders"
# file in the recipient's home directory. Temporarily set $acl_m9 to
# point to this file. If the host is found, set a flag in $acl_m0 and
# clear $acl_m1 to indicate that we should not reject this mail later.
#
accept
domains = +local_domains
set acl_m9 = /home/${extract{1}{=}{${lc:$local_part}}}/.forwarders
hosts = ${if exists {$acl_m9}{$acl_m9}}
set acl_m0 = accept
set acl_m1 =
In various statements in the acl_data ACL, we check the contents of $acl_m0
to avoid rejecting the mail if this is set as per above. For instance, to
avoid rejecting mail from whitelisted hosts due to a missing RFC2822 header:
deny
message = Your message does not conform to RFC2822 standard
log_message = missing header lines
!hosts = +relay_from_hosts
!senders = : postmaster@*
condition = ${if !eq {$acl_m0}{accept}{true}}
condition = ${if or {{!def:h_Message-ID:}\
{!def:h_Date:}\
{!def:h_Subject:}} {true}{false}}
The appropriate checks are embedded in the Final ACLs, next.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A.14. Final ACLs
OK, time to wake up! This has been very long reading - but congratulations
on making it this far!
The following ACLs incorporate all of the checks we have described so in
this implementation. However, some have been commented out, for the following
reasons:
  *  Greylisting. This either requires additional software to be installed,
or fairly complex inline configuration by way of additional ACLs and
definitions in the Exim configuration file. I highly recommend it,
though.
  *  Virus scanning. There is no ubiquitous scanner that nearly everyone
uses, similar to SpamAssassin for spam identification. On the other hand,
the documentation that comes with Exiscan-ACL should be easy to follow.
  *  Per-user settings for SpamAssassin. This is a trade-off that for many
is unacceptable, as it involves deferring mail to all but the first
recipient of a message.
  *  Envelope Sender Signatures. There are consequences, e.g. for roaming
users. Also, it involves configuring routers and transports as well as
ACLs. See that section for details.
  *  Accepting Bounces Only for Real Users. There are several ways of doing
this, and determining which users are real is specific to how mail is
delivered.
Without further ado, here comes the final result we have all been waiting
for.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A.14.1. acl_connect
# This access control list is used at the start of an incoming
# connection. The tests are run in order until the connection is
# either accepted or denied.
acl_connect:
# Record the current timestamp, in order to calculate elapsed time
# for subsequent delays
warn
set acl_m2 = $tod_epoch
# Accept mail received over local SMTP (i.e. not over TCP/IP). We do
# this by testing for an empty sending host field.
# Also accept mails received over a local interface, and from hosts
# for which we relay mail.
accept
hosts = : +relay_from_hosts
# If the connecting host is in one of several DNSbl's, then prepare
# a warning message in $acl_c1. We will later add this message to
# the mail header. In the mean time, its presence indicates that
# we should keep stalling the sender.
#
warn
!hosts = ${if exists {/etc/mail/whitelist-hosts} \
{/etc/mail/whitelist-hosts}}
dnslists = list.dsbl.org : \
dnsbl.sorbs.net : \
dnsbl.njabl.org : \
bl.spamcop.net : \
dsn.rfc-ignorant.org : \
sbl-xbl.spamhaus.org : \
l1.spews.dnsbl.sorbs.net
set acl_c1 = X-DNSbl-Warning: \
$sender_host_address is listed in $dnslist_domain\
${if def:dnslist_text { ($dnslist_text)}}
# Likewise, if reverse DNS lookup of the sender's host fails (i.e.
# there is no rDNS entry, or a forward lookup of the resulting name
# does not match the original IP address), then generate a warning
# message in $acl_c1. We will later add this message to the mail
# header.
warn
condition = ${if !def:acl_c1 {true}{false}}
!verify = reverse_host_lookup
set acl_m9 = Reverse DNS lookup failed for host $sender_host_address
set acl_c1 = X-DNS-Warning: $acl_m9
# Accept the connection, but if we previously generated a message in
# $acl_c1, stall the sender until 20 seconds has elapsed.
accept
set acl_m2 = ${if def:acl_c1 {${eval:20 + $acl_m2 - $tod_epoch}}{0}}
delay = ${if >{$acl_m2}{0}{$acl_m2}{0}}s
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A.14.2. acl_helo
# This access control list is used for the HELO or EHLO command in
# an incoming SMTP transaction. The tests are run in order until the
# greeting is either accepted or denied.
acl_helo:
# Record the current timestamp, in order to calculate elapsed time
# for subsequent delays
warn
set acl_m2 = $tod_epoch
# Accept mail received over local SMTP (i.e. not over TCP/IP).
# We do this by testing for an empty sending host field.
# Also accept mails received from hosts for which we relay mail.
#
accept
hosts = : +relay_from_hosts
# If the remote host greets with an IP address, then prepare a reject
# message in $acl_c0, and a log message in $acl_c1. We will later use
# these in a "deny" statement. In the mean time, their presence indicate
# that we should keep stalling the sender.
#
warn
condition = ${if isip {$sender_helo_name}{true}{false}}
set acl_c0 = Message was delivered by ratware
set acl_c1 = remote host used IP address in HELO/EHLO greeting
# Likewise if the peer greets with one of our own names
#
warn
condition = ${if match_domain{$sender_helo_name}\
{$primary_hostname:+local_domains:+relay_to_domains}\
{true}{false}}
set acl_c0 = Message was delivered by ratware
set acl_c1 = remote host used our name in HELO/EHLO greeting.
# If HELO verification fails, we prepare a warning message in acl_c1.
# We will later add this message to the mail header. In the mean time,
# its presence indicates that we should keep stalling the sender.
#
warn
condition = ${if !def:acl_c1 {true}{false}}
!verify = helo
set acl_c1 = X-HELO-Warning: Remote host $sender_host_address \
${if def:sender_host_name {($sender_host_name) }}\
incorrectly presented itself as $sender_helo_name
log_message = remote host presented unverifiable HELO/EHLO greeting.
# Accept the greeting, but if we previously generated a message in
# $acl_c1, stall the sender until 20 seconds has elapsed.
accept
set acl_m2 = ${if def:acl_c1 {${eval:20 + $acl_m2 - $tod_epoch}}{0}}
delay = ${if >{$acl_m2}{0}{$acl_m2}{0}}s
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A.14.3. acl_mail_from
# This access control list is used for the MAIL FROM: command in an
# incoming SMTP transaction. The tests are run in order until the
# sender address is either accepted or denied.
#
acl_mail_from:
# Record the current timestamp, in order to calculate elapsed time
# for subsequent delays
warn
set acl_m2 = $tod_epoch
# Accept mail received over local SMTP (i.e. not over TCP/IP).
# We do this by testing for an empty sending host field.
# Also accept mails received from hosts for which we relay mail.
#
# Sender verification is omitted here, because in many cases
# the clients are dumb MUAs that don't cope well with SMTP
# error responses.
#
accept
hosts = : +relay_from_hosts
# Accept if the message arrived over an authenticated connection,
# from any host. Again, these messages are usually from MUAs.
#
accept
authenticated = *
# If present, the ACL variables $acl_c0 and $acl_c1 contain rejection
# and/or warning messages to be applied to every delivery attempt in
# in this SMTP transaction. Assign these to the corresponding
# $acl_m{0,1} message-specific variables, and add any warning message
# from $acl_m1 to the message header. (In the case of a rejection,
# $acl_m1 actually contains a log message instead, but this does not
# matter, as we will discard the header along with the message).
#
warn
set acl_m0 = $acl_c0
set acl_m1 = $acl_c1
message = $acl_c1
# If sender did not provide a HELO/EHLO greeting, then prepare a reject
# message in $acl_m0, and a log message in $acl_m1. We will later use
# these in a "deny" statement. In the mean time, their presence indicate
# that we should keep stalling the sender.
#
warn
condition = ${if def:sender_helo_name {0}{1}}
set acl_m0 = Message was delivered by ratware
set acl_m1 = remote host did not present HELO/EHLO greeting.
# If we could not verify the sender address, create a warning message
# in $acl_m1 and add it to the mail header. The presence of this
# message indicates that we should keep stalling the sender.
#
# You may choose to omit the "callout" option. In particular, if
# you are sending outgoing mail through a smarthost, it will not
# give any useful information.
#
warn
condition = ${if !def:acl_m1 {true}{false}}
!verify = sender/callout
set acl_m1 = Invalid sender <$sender_address>
message = X-Sender-Verify-Failed: $acl_m1
log_message = $acl_m1
# Accept the sender, but if we previously generated a message in
# $acl_c1, stall the sender until 20 seconds has elapsed.
accept
set acl_m2 = ${if def:acl_c1 {${eval:20 + $acl_m2 - $tod_epoch}}{0}}
delay = ${if >{$acl_m2}{0}{$acl_m2}{0}}s
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A.14.4. acl_rcpt_to
# This access control list is used for every RCPT command in an
# incoming SMTP message. The tests are run in order until the
# recipient address is either accepted or denied.
acl_rcpt_to:
# Accept mail received over local SMTP (i.e. not over TCP/IP).
# We do this by testing for an empty sending host field.
# Also accept mails received from hosts for which we relay mail.
#
# Recipient verification is omitted here, because in many
# cases the clients are dumb MUAs that don't cope well with
# SMTP error responses.
#
accept
hosts = : +relay_from_hosts
# Accept if the message arrived over an authenticated connection,
# from any host. Again, these messages are usually from MUAs, so
# recipient verification is omitted.
#
accept
authenticated = *
# Deny if the local part contains @ or % or / or | or !. These are
# rarely found in genuine local parts, but are often tried by people
# looking to circumvent relaying restrictions.
#
# Also deny if the local part starts with a dot. Empty components
# aren't strictly legal in RFC 2822, but Exim allows them because
# this is common. However, actually starting with a dot may cause
# trouble if the local part is used as a file name (e.g. for a
# mailing list).
#
deny
local_parts = ^.*[@%!/|] : ^\\.
# Deny if we have previously given a reason for doing so in $acl_m0.
# Also stall the sender for another 20s first.
#
deny
message = $acl_m0
log_message = $acl_m1
condition = ${if and {{def:acl_m0}{def:acl_m1}} {true}}
delay = 20s
# If the recipient address is not in a domain for which we are handling
# mail, stall the sender and reject.
#
deny
message = relay not permitted
!domains = +local_domains : +relay_to_domains
delay = 20s
# If the address is in a local domain or in a domain for which are
# relaying, but is invalid, stall and reject.
#
deny
message = unknown user
!verify = recipient/callout=20s,defer_ok,use_sender
delay = ${if def:sender_address {1m}{0s}}
# Drop the connection if the envelope sender is empty, but there is
# more than one recipient address. Legitimate DSNs are never sent
# to more than one address.
#
drop
message = Legitimate bounces are never sent to more than one \
recipient.
senders = : postmaster@*
condition = $recipients_count
delay = 5m
# --------------------------------------------------------------------
# Limit the number of recipients in each incoming message to one
# to support per-user settings and data (e.g. for SpamAssassin).
#
# NOTE: Every mail sent to several users at your site will be
# delayed for 30 minutes or more per recipient. This
# significantly slow down the pace of discussion threads
# involving several internal and external parties.
# Thus, it is commented out by default.
#
#defer
# message = We only accept one recipient at a time - please try later.
# condition = $recipients_count
# --------------------------------------------------------------------
# Accept the mail if the sending host is matched in the ".forwarders"
# file in the recipient's home directory. Temporarily set $acl_m9 to
# point to this file. If the host is found, set a flag in $acl_m0 and
# clear $acl_m1 to indicate that we should not reject this mail later.
#
accept
domains = +local_domains
set acl_m9 = /home/${extract{1}{=}{${lc:$local_part}}}/.forwarders
hosts = ${if exists {$acl_m9}{$acl_m9}}
set acl_m0 = accept
set acl_m1 =
# Accept the mail if the sending host is matched in the global
# whitelist file. Temporarily set $acl_m9 to point to this file.
# If the host is found, set a flag in $acl_m0 and clear $acl_m1 to
# indicate that we should not reject this mail later.
#
accept
set acl_m9 = /etc/mail/whitelist-hosts
hosts = ${if exists {$acl_m9}{$acl_m9}}
set acl_m0 = accept
set acl_m1 =
# --------------------------------------------------------------------
# Envelope Sender Signature Check.
# This is commented out by default, because it requires additional
# configuration in the 'transports' and 'routers' sections.
#
# Accept the recipient addresss if it contains our own signature.
# This means this is a response (DSN, sender callout verification...)
# to a message that was previously sent from here.
#
#accept
# domains = +local_domains
# condition = ${if and {{match{${lc:$local_part}}{^(.*)=(.*)}}\
# {eq{${hash_8:${hmac{md5}{SECRET}{$1}}}}{$2}}}\
# {true}{false}}
#
# Otherwise, if this message claims to be a bounce (i.e. if there
# is no envelope sender), but if the receiver has elected to use
# and check against envelope sender signatures, reject it.
#
#deny
# message = This address does not match a valid, signed \
# return path from here.\n\
# You are responding to a forged sender address.
# log_message = bogus bounce.
# senders = : postmaster@*
# domains = +local_domains
# set acl_m9 = /home/${extract{1}{=}{${lc:$local_part}}}/.return-path-sign
# condition = ${if exists {$acl_m9}{true}}
# --------------------------------------------------------------------
# --------------------------------------------------------------------
# Deny mail for local users that do not have a mailbox (i.e. postmaster,
# webmaster...) if no sender address is provided. These users do
# not send outgoing mail, so they should not receive returned mail.
#
# NOTE: This is commented out by default, because the condition is
# specific to how local mail is delivered. If you want to
# enable this check, uncomment one and only one of the
# conditions below.
#
#deny
# message = This address never sends outgoing mail. \
# You are responding to a forged sender address.
# log_message = bogus bounce for system user <$local_part@$domain>
# senders = : postmaster@*
# domains = +local_domains
# set acl_m9 = ${extract{1}{=}{${lc:$local_part}}}
#
# --- Uncomment the following 2 lines if recipients have local accounts:
# set acl_m9 = ${extract{2}{:}{${lookup passwd {$acl_m9}{$value}}}{0}}
# !condition = ${if and {{>={$acl_m9}{500}} {<${acl_m9}{60000}}} {true}}
#
# --- Uncomment the following line if you deliver mail to Cyrus:
# condition = ${run {/usr/sbin/mbpath -q -s user.$acl_m9} {true}}
# --------------------------------------------------------------------
# Query the SPF information for the sender address domain, if any,
# to see if the sending host is authorized to deliver its mail.
# If not, reject the mail.
#
deny
message = [SPF] $sender_host_address is not allowed to send mail \
from $sender_address_domain
log_message = SPF check failed.
spf = fail
# Add a SPF-Received: line to the message header
warn
message = $spf_received
# --------------------------------------------------------------------
# Check greylisting status for this particular peer/sender/recipient.
# Before uncommenting this statement, you need to install "greylistd".
# See: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/greylistd
#
# Note that we do not greylist messages with NULL sender, because
# sender callout verification would break (and we might not be able
# to send mail to a host that performs callouts).
#
#defer
# message = $sender_host_address is not yet authorized to deliver mail \
# from <$sender_address> to <$local_part@$domain>. \
# Please try later.
# log_message = greylisted.
# domains = +local_domains : +relay_to_domains
# !senders = : postmaster@*
# set acl_m9 = $sender_host_address $sender_address $local_part@$domain
# set acl_m9 = ${readsocket{/var/run/greylistd/socket}{$acl_m9}{5s}{}{}}
# condition = ${if eq {$acl_m9}{grey}{true}{false}}
# delay = 20s
# --------------------------------------------------------------------
# Accept the recipient.
accept
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A.14.5. acl_data
# This access control list is used for message data received via
# SMTP. The tests are run in order until the recipient address
# is either accepted or denied.
acl_data:
# Log some header lines
warn
logwrite = Subject: $h_Subject:
# Add Message-ID if missing in messages received from our own hosts.
warn
condition = ${if !def:h_Message-ID: {1}}
hosts = +relay_from_hosts
message = Message-ID: <E$message_id@$primary_hostname>
# Accept mail received over local SMTP (i.e. not over TCP/IP).
# We do this by testing for an empty sending host field.
# Also accept mails received from hosts for which we relay mail.
#
accept
hosts = : +relay_from_hosts
# Accept if the message arrived over an authenticated connection, from
# any host.
#
accept
authenticated = *
# Deny if we have previously given a reason for doing so in $acl_m0.
# Also stall the sender for another 20s first.
#
deny
message = $acl_m0
log_message = $acl_m1
condition = ${if and {{def:acl_m0}{def:acl_m1}} {true}{false}}
delay = 20s
# enforce a message-size limit
#
deny
message = Message size $message_size is larger than limit of \
MESSAGE_SIZE_LIMIT
condition = ${if >{$message_size}{MESSAGE_SIZE_LIMIT}{yes}{no}}
# Deny unless the addresses in the header is syntactically correct.
#
deny
message = Your message does not conform to RFC2822 standard
log_message = message header fail syntax check
!verify = header_syntax
# Uncomment the following to deny non-local messages without
# a Message-ID:, Date:, or Subject: header.
#
# Note that some specialized MTAs, such as certain mailing list
# servers, do not automatically generate a Message-ID for bounces.
# Thus, we add the check for a non-empty sender.
#
#deny
# message = Your message does not conform to RFC2822 standard
# log_message = missing header lines
# !hosts = +relay_from_hosts
# !senders = : postmaster@*
# condition = ${if !eq {$acl_m0}{accept}{true}}
# condition = ${if or {{!def:h_Message-ID:}\
# {!def:h_Date:}\
# {!def:h_Subject:}} {true}{false}}
# Warn unless there is a verifiable sender address in at least
# one of the "Sender:", "Reply-To:", or "From:" header lines.
#
warn
message = X-Sender-Verify-Failed: No valid sender in message header
log_message = No valid sender in message header
!verify = header_sender
# --------------------------------------------------------------------
# Perform greylisting on messages with no envelope sender here.
# We did not subject these to greylisting after RCPT TO: because
# that would interfere with remote hosts doing sender callouts.
# Note that the sender address is empty, so we don't bother using it.
#
# Before uncommenting this statement, you need to install "greylistd".
# See: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/greylistd
#
#defer
# message = $sender_host_address is not yet authorized to send \
# delivery status reports to <$recipients>. \
# Please try later.
# log_message = greylisted.
# senders = : postmaster@*
# condition = ${if !eq {$acl_m0}{accept}{true}}
# set acl_m9 = $sender_host_address $recipients
# set acl_m9 = ${readsocket{/var/run/greylistd/socket}{$acl_m9}{5s}{}{}}
# condition = ${if eq {$acl_m9}{grey}{true}{false}}
# delay = 20s
# --------------------------------------------------------------------
# --- BEGIN EXISCAN configuration ---
# Reject messages that have serious MIME errors.
#
deny
message = Serious MIME defect detected ($demime_reason)
demime = *
condition = ${if >{$demime_errorlevel}{2}{1}{0}}
# Unpack MIME containers and reject file extensions used by worms.
# This calls the demime condition again, but it will return cached results.
# Note that the extension list may be incomplete.
#
deny
message = We do not accept ".$found_extension" attachments here.
demime = bat:btm:cmd:com:cpl:dll:exe:lnk:msi:pif:prf:reg:scr:vbs:url
# Messages larger than MESSAGE_SIZE_SPAM_MAX are accepted without
# spam or virus scanning
accept
condition = ${if >{$message_size}{MESSAGE_SIZE_SPAM_MAX} {true}}
logwrite = :main: Not classified \
(message size larger than MESSAGE_SIZE_SPAM_MAX)
# --------------------------------------------------------------------
# Anti-Virus scanning
# This requires an 'av_scanner' setting in the main section.
#
#deny
# message = This message contains a virus ($malware_name)
# demime = *
# malware = */defer_ok
# --------------------------------------------------------------------
# Invoke SpamAssassin to obtain $spam_score and $spam_report.
# Depending on the classification, $acl_m9 is set to "ham" or "spam".
#
# If the message is classified as spam, and we have not previously
# set $acl_m0 to indicate that we want to accept it anyway, pretend
# reject it.
#
warn
set acl_m9 = ham
# ------------------------------------------------------------------
# If you want to allow per-user settings for SpamAssassin,
# uncomment the following line, and comment out "spam = mail".
# We pass on the username specified in the recipient address,
# i.e. the portion before any '=' or '@' character, converted
# to lowercase. Multiple recipients should not occur, since
# we previously limited delivery to one recipient at a time.
#
# spam = ${lc:${extract{1}{=@}{$recipients}{$value}{mail}}}
# ------------------------------------------------------------------
spam = mail
set acl_m9 = spam
condition = ${if !eq {$acl_m0}{accept}{true}}
control = fakereject
logwrite = :reject: Rejected spam (score $spam_score): $spam_report
# Add an appropriate X-Spam-Status: header to the message.
#
warn
message = X-Spam-Status: \
${if eq {$acl_m9}{spam}{Yes}{No}} (score $spam_score)\
${if def:spam_report {: $spam_report}}
logwrite = :main: Classified as $acl_m9 (score $spam_score)
# --- END EXISCAN configuration ---
# Accept the message.
#
accept
Glossary
These are definitions for some of the words and terms that are used
throughout this document.
B
Bayesian Filters
A filter that assigns a probability of spam based on the recurrence of
words (or, more recently, word constellations/phrases) between messages.
You initially train the filter by feeding it known junk mail (spam) and
known legitimate mail (ham). A bayesian score is then be assigned to each
word (or phrase) in each message, indicating whether this particular word
or phrase occurs most commonly in ham or in spam. The word, along with
its score, is stored in a bayesian index.
Such filters may catch indicators that may be missed by human
programmers trying to manually create keyword-based filters. At the very
least, they automate this task.
Bayesian word indexes are most certainly specific to the language in
which they received training. Moreover, they are specific to individual
users. Thus, they are perhaps more suitable for individual content
filters (e.g. in Mail User Agents) than they are for system-wide,
SMTP-time filtering.
Moreover, spammers have developed techniques to defeat simple bayesian
filters, by including random dictionary words and/or short stories in
their messages. This decreases the spam probability assigned by a
baynesian filter, and in the long run, degrades the quality of the
bayesian index.
See also: [http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=Bayesian] http://
www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=Bayesian.
C
Collateral Damage
Blocking of a legitimate sender host due to an entry in a DNS
blocklist.
Some blocklists (like SPEWS) routinely list the entire IP address space
of an ISP if they feel the ISP is not responsive to abuse complaints,
thereby affecting all its customers.
See also: False Positive
Collateral Spam
Automated messages sent in response to an original message (mostly spam
or malware) where the sender address is forged. Typical examples of
collateral spam include virus scan reports ("You have a virus") or other
Delivery Status Notifications).
D
Domain Name System
(abbrev: DNS) The de-facto standard for obtaining information about
internet domain names. Examples of such information include IP addresses
of its servers (so-called A records), the dedication of incoming mail
exchangers (MX records), generic server information (SRV records), and
miscellaneous text information (TXT records).
DNS is a hierarctical, distributed system; each domain name is
associated with a set of one or more DNS servers that provide information
about that domain - including delegation of name service for its
subdomains.
For instance, the top-level domain "org" is operated by The Public
Interest Registry; its DNS servers delegate queries for the domain name
"tldp.org" to specific name servers for The Linux Documentation Project.
In turn, TLDPs name server (actually operated by UNC) may or may not
delegate queries for third-level names, such as "www.tldp.org".
DNS lookups are usually performed by forwarding name servers, such as
those provided by an Internet Service Provider (e.g. via DHCP).
Delivery Status Notification
(abbrev: DSN) A message automatically created by an MTA or MDA, to
inform the sender of an original messsage (usually included in the DSN)
about its status. For instance, DSNs may inform the sender of the
original message that it could not be delivered due to a temporary or
permanent problem, and/or whether or not and for how long delivery
attempts will continue.
Delivery Status Notifications are sent with an empty Envelope Sender
address.
E
Envelope Sender
The e-mail address given as sender of a message during the SMTP
transaction, using the MAIL FROM: command. This may be different from the
address provided in the "From:" header of the message itself.
One special case is Delivery Status Notification (bounced message,
return receipt, vacation message..). For such mails, the Envelope Sender
is empty. This is to prevent Mail Loops, and generally to be able to
distinguish these from "regular" mails.
See also: The SMTP Transaction
Envelope Recipient
The e-mail address(es) to which the message is sent. These are provided
during the SMTP transaction, using the RCPT TO command. These may be
different from the addresses provided in the "To:" and "Cc:" headers of
the message itself.
See also: The SMTP Transaction
F
False Negative
Junk mail (spam, virus, malware) that is misclassified as legitimate
mail (and consequently, not filtered out).
False Positive
Legitimate mail that is misclassified as junk (and consequently,
blocked).
See also: Collateral Damage.
Fully Qualified Domain Name
(a.k.a. "FQDN"). A full, globally unique, internet name, including DNS
domain. For instance: "www.yahoo.com".
A FQDN does not always point to a single host. For instance, common
service names such as "www" often point to many IP addresses, in order to
provide some load balancing on the servers. However, the primary host
name of a given machine should always be unique to that machine; for
instance: "p16.www.scd.yahoo.com".
A FQDN always contains a period ("."). The part before the first period
is the unqualified name, and is not globally unique.
J
Joe Job
A spam designed to look like it came from someone else's valid address,
often in a malicous attempt at generating complaints from third parties
and/or cause other damage to the owner of that address.
See also: [http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=Joe%20Job] http://
www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=Joe%20Job
M
Mail Delivery Agent
(abbrev: MDA) Software that runs on the machine where a users' mailbox
is located, to deliver mail into that mailbox. Often, that delivery is
performed directly by the MTA Mail Transport Agent, which then serves a
secondary role as an MDA. Examples of separate Mail Delivery Agents
include: Deliver, Procmail, Cyrmaster and/or Cyrdeliver (from the Cyrus
IMAP suite).
Mail Loop
A situation where one automated message triggers another, which
directly or indirectly triggers the first message over again, and so on.
Imagine a mailing list where one of the subscribers is the address of
the list itself. This situation is often dealt with by the list server
adding an "X-Loop:" line in the message header, and not processing mails
that already have one.
Another equivalent term is Ringing.
Mail Transport Agent
(abbrev: MTA) Software that runs on a mail server, such as the mail
exchanger(s) of a internet domain, to send mail to and receive mail from
other hosts. Popular MTAs include: Sendmail, Postfix, Exim, Smail.
Mail User Agent
(abbrev: MUA; a.k.a. Mail Reader) User software to access, download,
read, and send mail. Examples include Microsoft Outlook/Outlook Express,
Apple Mail.app, Mozilla Thunderbird, Ximian Evolution.
Mail Exchanger
(abbrev: MX) A machine dedicated to (sending and/or) receiving mail for
an internet domain.
The DNS zone information for a internet domain normally contains a list
of Fully Qualified Domain Names that act as incoming mail exchangers for
that domain. Each such listing is called an "MX record", and it also
contains a number indicating its "priority" among several "MX records".
The listing with the lowest number has the first priority, and is
considered the "primary mail exchanger" for that domain.
Micropayment Schemes
(a.k.a. sender pay schemes). The sender of a message expends some
machine resources to create a virtual postage stamp for each recipient of
a message - usually by solving a mathematical challenge that requires a
large number of memory read/write operations, but is relatively CPU speed
insensitive. This stamp is then added to the headers of the message, and
the recipient would validate the stamp through a much simpler decoding
operation.
The idea is that because the message requires a postage stamp for every
recipient address, spamming hundreds or thousands of users at once would
be prohibitively "expensive".
Two such systems are:
  +  [http://www.camram.org/] Camram
  +  Microsoft's Penny Black Project
O
Open Proxy
A proxy which openly accepts TCP/IP connections from anywhere, and
forwards them anywhere.
These are typically exploited by spammers and virii, who use them to
conceal their own IP address, and/or to more effectively distribute
transmission loads across several hosts and networks.
See also: Zombie Host
Open Relay
A Relay which openly accepts mail from anywhere, and forwards them to
anywhere.
In the 1980s, virtually every public SMTP server was an Open Relay.
Messages would often travel between multiple third-party machines before
it reached the intended recipient. Now, legitimate mail are almost
exclusively sent directly from an outgoing Mail Transport Agent on the
sender's end to the incoming Mail Exchanger(s) for the recipient's
domain.
Conversely, Open Relay servers that still exist on the internet are
almost exclusively exploited by spammers to hide their own identity, and
to perform some load balancing on the task of sending out millions of
messages, presumably before DNS blocklists have a chance to get all of
these machines listed.
See also the discussion on Open Relay Prevention.
P
proxy
A machine that acts on behalf of someone else. It may forward e.g. HTTP
requests or TCP/IP connections, usually to or from the internet. For
instance, companies - or sometimes entire countries - often use "Web
Proxy Servers" to filter outgoing HTTP requests from their internal
network. This may or may not be transparent to the end user.
See also: Open Proxy, Relay.
R
Ratware
Mass-mailing virii and e-mail software used by spammers, specifically
designed to deliver large amounts of mail in a very short time.
Most ratware implementations incorporate only as much SMTP client code
as strictly neccessary to deliver mail in the best-case scenario. They
provide false or inaccurate information in the SMTP dialogue with the
receiving host. They do not wait for responses from the receiver before
issuing commands, and disconnect if no response has been received in a
few seconds. They do not follow normal retry mechanisms in case of
temporary failures.
Relay
A machine that forwards e-mail, usually to or from the internet. One
example of a relay is the "smarthost" that an ISP provides to its
customers for sending outgoing mail.
See also: Open Relay, proxy
Request for Comments
(abbrev: RFC) From [http://www.rfc-editor.org/] http://
www.rfc-editor.org/: " The Request for Comments (RFC) document series is
a set of technical and organizational notes about the internet [...].
Memos in the RFC series discuss many aspects of computer networking,
incluing protocols, procedures, programs, and concepts, as well as
meeting notes, opinions, and sometimes humor. "
These documents make up the "rules" internet conduct, including
descriptions of protocols and data formats. Of particular interest for
mail deliveries are:
  +  RFC 2821, "Simple Mail transfer Protocol", and
  +  RFC 2822, "Internet Message Format".
S
Spam Trap
An e-mail address that is seeded to address-harvesting robots via
public locations, then used to feed collaborative tools such as DNS
Blacklists and Junk Mail Signature Repository.
Mails sent to these addresses are normally spam or malware. However,
some of it will be collateral, spam - i.e. Delivery Status Notification
to faked sender addresses. Thus, unless the spam trap has safeguards in
place to disregard such messages, the resulting tool may not be
completely reliable.
Z
Zombie Host
A machine with an internet connection that is infected by a
mass-mailing virus or worm. Such machines invariably run a flavor of the
Microsoft® Windows® operating system, and are almost always in
"residential" IP address blocks. Their owners either do not know or do
not care that the machines are infected, and often, their ISP will not
take any actions to shut them down.
Fortunately, there are various DNS blocklists, such as
"dul.dnsbl.sorbs.net", that incorporate such "residential" address
blocks. You should be able to use these blocklists to reject incoming
mail. Legitimate mail from residential users should normally go through
their ISP's "smarthost".
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Appendix B. GNU General Public License
B.1. Preamble
The licenses for most software are designed to take away your freedom to
share and change it. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended
to guarantee your freedom to share and change free software - to make sure
the software is free for all its users. This General Public License applies
to most of the Free Software Foundation's software and to any other program
whose authors commit to using it. (Some other Free Software Foundation
software is covered by the GNU Library General Public License instead.) You
can apply it to your programs, too.
When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price. Our
General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom
to distribute copies of free software (and charge for this service if you
wish), that you receive source code or can get it if you want it, that you
can change the software or use pieces of it in new free programs; and that
you know you can do these things.
To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid anyone to
deny you these rights or to ask you to surrender the rights. These
restrictions translate to certain responsibilities for you if you distribute
copies of the software, or if you modify it.
For example, if you distribute copies of such a program, whether gratis or
for a fee, you must give the recipients all the rights that you have. You
must make sure that they, too, receive or can get the source code. And you
must show them these terms so they know their rights.
We protect your rights with two steps:
1. copyright the software, and
2. offer you this license which gives you legal permission to copy,
distribute and/or modify the software.
Also, for each author's protection and ours, we want to make certain that
everyone understands that there is no warranty for this free software. If the
software is modified by someone else and passed on, we want its recipients to
know that what they have is not the original, so that any problems introduced
by others will not reflect on the original authors' reputations.
Finally, any free program is threatened constantly by software patents. We
wish to avoid the danger that redistributors of a free program will
individually obtain patent licenses, in effect making the program
proprietary. To prevent this, we have made it clear that any patent must be
licensed for everyone's free use or not licensed at all.
The precise terms and conditions for copying, distribution and modification
follow.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
B.2. TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION
B.2.1. Section 0
This License applies to any program or other work which contains a notice
placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed under the terms
of this General Public License. The "Program", below, refers to any such
program or work, and a "work based on the Program " means either the Program
or any derivative work under copyright law: that is to say, a work containing
the Program or a portion of it, either verbatim or with modifications and/or
translated into another language. (Hereinafter, translation is included
without limitation in the term "modification ".) Each licensee is addressed
as "you".
Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered
by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program
is not restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its
contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been
made by running the Program). Whether that is true depends on what the
Program does.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
B.2.2. Section 1
You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source code as
you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and
appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice and
disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the notices that refer to this
License and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other recipients of
the Program a copy of this License along with the Program.
You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may
at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
B.2.3. Section 2
You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it, thus
forming a work based on the Program, and copy and distribute such
modifications or work under the terms of Section 1 above, provided that you
also meet all of these conditions:
1. You must cause the modified files to carry prominent notices stating that
you changed the files and the date of any change.
2. You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or
in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to
be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms
of this License.
3. If the modified program normally reads commands interactively when run,
you must cause it, when started running for such interactive use in the
most ordinary way, to print or display an announcement including an
appropriate copyright notice and a notice that there is no warranty (or
else, saying that you provide a warranty) and that users may redistribute
the program under these conditions, and telling the user how to view a
copy of this License.
Note Exception:
  If the Program itself is interactive but does not normally print
such an announcement, your work based on the Program is not required
to print an announcement.)
These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If identifiable
sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be reasonably
considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License,
and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as
separate works. But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole
which is a work based on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be
on the terms of this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to
the entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it.
Thus, it is not the intent of this section to claim rights or contest your
rights to work written entirely by you; rather, the intent is to exercise the
right to control the distribution of derivative or collective works based on
the Program.
In addition, mere aggregation of another work not based on the Program with
the Program (or with a work based on the Program) on a volume of a storage or
distribution medium does not bring the other work under the scope of this
License.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
B.2.4. Section 3
You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section
2 in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above
provided that you also do one of the following:
1. Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source
code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above
on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
2. Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to
give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically
performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the
corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections
1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
3. Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to
distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only
for noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in
object code or executable form with such an offer, in accord with
Subsection b above.)
The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making
modifications to it. For an executable work, complete source code means all
the source code for all modules it contains, plus any associated interface
definition files, plus the scripts used to control compilation and
installation of the executable. However, as a special exception, the source
code distributed need not include anything that is normally distributed (in
either source or binary form) with the major components (compiler, kernel,
and so on) of the operating system on which the executable runs, unless that
component itself accompanies the executable.
If distribution of executable or object code is made by offering access to
copy from a designated place, then offering equivalent access to copy the
source code from the same place counts as distribution of the source code,
even though third parties are not compelled to copy the source along with the
object code.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
B.2.5. Section 4
You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program except as
expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify,
sublicense or distribute the Program is void, and will automatically
terminate your rights under this License. However, parties who have received
copies, or rights, from you under this License will not have their licenses
terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
B.2.6. Section 5
You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it.
However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the
Program or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you
do not accept this License. Therefore, by modifying or distributing the
Program (or any work based on the Program), you indicate your acceptance of
this License to do so, and all its terms and conditions for copying,
distributing or modifying the Program or works based on it.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
B.2.7. Section 6
Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program),
the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to
copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to these terms and conditions.
You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of
the rights granted herein. You are not responsible for enforcing compliance
by third parties to this License.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
B.2.8. Section 7
If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent infringement
or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues), conditions are
imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) that
contradict the conditions of this License, they do not excuse you from the
conditions of this License. If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy
simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent
obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all.
For example, if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution
of the Program by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through
you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to
refrain entirely from distribution of the Program.
If any portion of this section is held invalid or unenforceable under any
particular circumstance, the balance of the section is intended to apply and
the section as a whole is intended to apply in other circumstances.
It is not the purpose of this section to induce you to infringe any patents
or other property right claims or to contest validity of any such claims;
this section has the sole purpose of protecting the integrity of the free
software distribution system, which is implemented by public license
practices. Many people have made generous contributions to the wide range of
software distributed through that system in reliance on consistent
application of that system; it is up to the author/donor to decide if he or
she is willing to distribute software through any other system and a licensee
cannot impose that choice.
This section is intended to make thoroughly clear what is believed to be a
consequence of the rest of this License.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
B.2.9. Section 8
If the distribution and/or use of the Program is restricted in certain
countries either by patents or by copyrighted interfaces, the original
copyright holder who places the Program under this License may add an
explicit geographical distribution limitation excluding those countries, so
that distribution is permitted only in or among countries not thus excluded.
In such case, this License incorporates the limitation as if written in the
body of this License.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
B.2.10. Section 9
The Free Software Foundation may publish revised and/or new versions of the
General Public License from time to time. Such new versions will be similar
in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to address new
problems or concerns.
Each version is given a distinguishing version number. If the Program
specifies a version number of this License which applies to it and "any later
version", you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of
that version or of any later version published by the Free Software
Foundation. If the Program does not specify a version number of this License,
you may choose any version ever published by the Free Software Foundation.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
B.2.11. Section 10
If you wish to incorporate parts of the Program into other free programs
whose distribution conditions are different, write to the author to ask for
permission. For software which is copyrighted by the Free Software
Foundation, write to the Free Software Foundation; we sometimes make
exceptions for this. Our decision will be guided by the two goals of
preserving the free status of all derivatives of our free software and of
promoting the sharing and reuse of software generally.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
B.2.12. NO WARRANTY Section 11
BECAUSE THE PROGRAM IS LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE, THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE
PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE
STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE
PROGRAM "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED,
INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND
PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE,
YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
B.2.13. Section 12
IN NO EVENT UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW OR AGREED TO IN WRITING WILL
ANY COPYRIGHT HOLDER, OR ANY OTHER PARTY WHO MAY MODIFY AND/OR REDISTRIBUTE
THE PROGRAM AS PERMITTED ABOVE, BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAMAGES, INCLUDING ANY
GENERAL, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE
OR INABILITY TO USE THE PROGRAM (INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO LOSS OF DATA OR
DATA BEING RENDERED INACCURATE OR LOSSES SUSTAINED BY YOU OR THIRD PARTIES OR
A FAILURE OF THE PROGRAM TO OPERATE WITH ANY OTHER PROGRAMS), EVEN IF SUCH
HOLDER OR OTHER PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
END OF TERMS AND CONDITIONS
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
B.3. How to Apply These Terms to Your New Programs
If you develop a new program, and you want it to be of the greatest
possible use to the public, the best way to achieve this is to make it free
software which everyone can redistribute and change under these terms.
To do so, attach the following notices to the program. It is safest to
attach them to the start of each source file to most effectively convey the
exclusion of warranty; and each file should have at least the "copyright"
line and a pointer to where the full notice is found.
<one line to give the program's name and a brief idea of what it does.>
Copyright (C) <year> <name of author>
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free
Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any
later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT
ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS
FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more
details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along
with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59
Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA
Also add information on how to contact you by electronic and paper mail.
If the program is interactive, make it output a short notice like this when
it starts in an interactive mode:
Gnomovision version 69, Copyright (C) year name of author Gnomovision comes
with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details type `show w'. This is free
software, and you are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions;
type `show c' for details.
The hypothetical commands `show w' and `show c' should show the appropriate
parts of the General Public License. Of course, the commands you use may be
called something other than `show w' and `show c'; they could even be
mouse-clicks or menu items--whatever suits your program.
You should also get your employer (if you work as a programmer) or your
school, if any, to sign a "copyright disclaimer" for the program, if
necessary. Here is a sample; alter the names:
Yoyodyne, Inc., hereby disclaims all copyright interest in the program
`Gnomovision' (which makes passes at compilers) written by James Hacker.
<signature of Ty Coon>, 1 April 1989 Ty Coon, President of Vice
This General Public License does not permit incorporating your program into
proprietary programs. If your program is a subroutine library, you may
consider it more useful to permit linking proprietary applications with the
library. If this is what you want to do, use the GNU Library General Public
License instead of this License.
Notes
[1] Untrusted third party hosts may still generate collateral spam if you
reject the mail. However, unless that host is an Open Proxy or Open
Relay, it presumably delivers mail only from legitimate senders, whose
addresses are valid. If it is an Open Proxy or SMTP Relay - well, it is
better that you reject the mail and let it freeze in their outgoing mail
queue than letting it freeze in yours. Eventually, this ought to give
the owners of that server a clue.
[2] Personally I do not think challenge/response systems are a good idea in
any case. They generate Collateral Spam, they require special attention
for mail sent from automated sources such as monthly bank statements,
and they degrade the usability of e-mail as people need to jump through
hoops to get in touch with each other. Many times, senders of legitimate
mail will not bother to or know that they need to follow up to the
confirmation request, and the mail is lost.
[3] My view stands in sharp contrast to that of a large number of "spam
hacktivists", such as the maintainers of the [http://www.spews.org/]
SPEWS blacklist. One of the stated aims of this list is precisely to
inflict Collateral Damage as a means of putting pressure on ISPs to
react on abuse complaints. Listing complaints are typically met with
knee-jerk responses such as "bother your ISP, not us", or "get another
ISP".
Often, these are not viable options. Consider developing countries. For
that matter, consider the fact that nearly everywhere, broadband
providers are regulated monopolies. I believe that these attitudes
illustrate the exact crux of the problem with trusting these groups.
Put plainly, there are much better and more accurate ways available to
filter junk mail.
[4] Beware that while you are holding up an incoming SMTP delivery, you are
also holding up a TCP socket on your server, as well as memory and other
server resources. If your server is generally busy, imposing SMTP
transaction delays will make you more vulnerable to Denial-of-Service
attacks. A more "scalable" option may be to drop the connection once you
have conclusive evidence that the sender is a ratware client.
[5] Similar lists exist for different purposes. For instance,
"bondedsender.org" is a DNS whitelist (DNSwl), containing "trusted" IP
addresses, whose owners have posted a financial bond that will be
debited in the event that spam originates from that address. Other lists
contain IP addresses in use by specific countries, specific ISPs, etc.
[6] For instance, the outgoing mail exchangers ("smart hosts") of the
world's largest Internet Service Provider (ISP), comcast.net, is as of
the time of this writing included in the SPEWS Level 1 list. Not wholly
undeserved from the viewpoint that Comcast needs to more effectively
enforce their own AUP, but this listing does affect 30% of all US
internet users, mostly "innocent" subscribers such as myself.
To make matters worse, information published in the [http://spews.org/
faq.html] SPEWS FAQ states: The majority of the Level 1 list is made up
of netblocks owned by the spammers or spam support operations
themselves, with few or no other legitimate customers detected.
Technically, this information is accurate if (a) you consider Comcast a
"spam support operation", and (b) pay attention to the word "other".
Word parsing aside, this information is clearly misleading.
[7] Although this check is normally quite effective at weeding out junk,
there are reports of buggy L-Soft [http://www.lsoft.com/products/
default.asp?item=listserv] listserv installations that greet with the
plain IP address of the list server.
[8] A special case is the NULL envelope sender address (i.e. MAIL FROM: <>)
used in Delivery Status Notifications and other automatically generated
responses. This address should always be accepted.
[9] Although rare, some "legitimate" bulk mail senders, such as
groups.yahoo.com, will not retry temporarily failed deliveries. Evan
Harris has compiled a list of such senders, suitable for whitelisting
purposes: [http://cvs.puremagic.com/viewcvs/greylisting/schema/
whitelist_ip.txt?view=markup] http://cvs.puremagic.com/viewcvs/
greylisting/schema/whitelist_ip.txt?view=markup.
[10] Large sites often use multiple servers to handle outgoing mail. For
instance, one server or pool of servers may be used for immediate
delivery. If the first delivery attempt fails, the mail is handed off to
a fallback server which has been tuned for large queues. Hence, from
such sites, the first two delivery attempts will fail.
[11] Some specialized MTAs, such as certain mailing list servers, do not
automatically generate a Message-ID: header for "bounced" messages (
Delivery Status Notifications). These messages are identified by an
empty Envelope Sender.
[12] The IMAP protocol does not allow for NUL characters to be transmitted to
the mail user agent, so the Cyrus developers decided that the easiest
way to deal with mails containing it was to reject them.
[13] Why on earth the authors of anti-virus software are stupid enough to
trust the sender address in an e-mail containing a virus is perhaps a
topic for a closer psychoanalytic study.
[14] In particular, Exim is perhaps most popular among users of [http://
www.debian.org/] Debian GNU/Linux, as it is the default MTA in that
distribution. If you use Debian ("Sarge" or later), you can obtain
Exim+Exiscan-ACL by installing the exim4-daemon-heavy package:
# apt-get install exim4-daemon-heavy
[15] Debian users: The exim4-config package gives you a choice between
splitting the Exim configuration into several small chunks distributed
within subdirectories below /etc/exim4/conf.d, or to keep the entire
configuration in a single file.
If you chose the former option (I recommend this!), you can keep your
customization well separated from the stock configuration provided with
the exim4-config package by creating new files within these
subdirectories, rather than modifying the existing ones. For instance,
you may create a file named /etc/exim4/conf.d/acl/
80_local-config_rcpt_to to declare your own ACL for the RCPT TO: command
(see below).
The Exim "init" script (/etc/init.d/exim4) will automatically
consolidate all these files into a single large run-time configuration
file next time you (re)start.
[16] Debian users: As of July 14th, 2004, the version of Exiscan-ACL that is
included in the exim4-daemon-heavy package does not yet have support for
SPF. In the mean time, you may choose the other SPF implementation;
install libmail-spf-query-perl.
[17] Although it is true that Bayesian training is specific to each user, it
should be noted that SpamAssassin's Bayesian classifier is, IMHO, not
that stellar in any case. Especially I find this to be the case since
spammers have learned to defeat such systems by seeding random
dictionary words or stories in their mail (e.g. in the metadata of HTML
messages).
[18] If you think this is an overkill, would I tend to agree on the surface.
In previous versions of this document, I simply used ${hash_8:SECRET
=....} to generate the last component of the signature. However, with
this it would be technically possible, with a bit of insight into Exim's
${hash...} function and some samples of your outgoing mail sent to
different recipients, to forge the signature. Matthew Byng-Maddic <mbm
(at) colondot.net> notes: What you're writing is a document that you
expect many people to just copy. Given that, kerchoff's principle starts
applying, and all of your secrecy should be in the key. If the key can
be reversed out, as seems likely with a few return paths, then the
spammer kan once again start emitting valid return-paths from that
domain, and you're back to where you started. [...] Better, IMO, to have
it being strong from the start.
[19] In the examples above, the senders condition is actually redundant,
since the file /home//.return-path-sign is not likely to exist. However,
we make the condition explicit for clarity.
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