<OT> Spamming question

[David A. Bandel]

On Fri, 3 May 2002 01:00:38 -0400
begin  Joel Hammer <Joel at hammershome.com> spewed forth:

> There was an article in the Wall Street Journal today about the problems
> posed to small businesses by spammers. Basically, the spammer hijacks
> the mail server or just sends large amount of mail to the business
> everyday.
> 
> Is this a special problem just for silly  people? I have a mail server
> going and, except for my early days on linux, have never been exploited
> in this way, even thought I am on line 24/7. So, is this just a problem
> of people who don't know what they are doing?

The most popular mail transport agent (MTA, also known as a mail server),
is sendmail.  Until sendmail version 8.9.x, the default configuration was
to relay mail, no questions asked.  While today we are at sendmail 8.12.3
(sendmail 8.9.x was released years ago), many old installations have never
been upgraded and still have this problem (among others, like security
holes big enough to fly 747's through, but that's another story).

Many other MTAs suffered the same problems.  Most have been patched.  But
all can be easily reconfigured to relay mail from anyone who cares to use
it, with no brakes on the system (max # of recipients, max # of messages
you can send at one time, etc.).  Combine the above with know "exploders"
(a mail address that is nothing more than an alias for thousands of other
mail addresses), and the problem is tremendous.

Current estimates place the # of spam messages on the Internet at any
given time at 20% of the e-mail messages on the Internet.  SPAM has been
known to bring even BIG mail servers down.

That answer the question?

David A. Bandel
-- 
Focus on the dream, not the competition.
		-- Nemesis Racing Team motto