[clug-talk] Did shaw shut down external ports?

[Gustin Johnson]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1



William Astle wrote:
> Gustin Johnson wrote:
>> Even though I have provided a work around (the ports 587 and 465) for my
>> clients, how long until the spammers begin to use these ports as well?
>> At best this policy of Shaw's provides short term respite while doing
>> nothing to combat the actual problem.  I would rather they spend our
>> money more effectively.
> 
> 587 is not supposed to accept anything at all unless it is
> authenticated. If you've simply deployed it as a clone of port 25, you
> should probably consider changing it to require authentication and not
> accept local mail delivery (unless it's authenticated of course).

I have seen a few cases already where 587 was simply a clone of 25.  I
assume nothing here :)

> Assuming[1] the majority of people deploy 587 correctly (authenticated
> submissions only), there's no percentage for the spammers to switch to
> using it. And yes, I am practicing what I preach here; my servers do
> require authentication on port 587. It was a trivial[2] configuration
> change.

As always, RTFM is almost never a bad thing, unless the funny manual is
dead wrong...

> All that said, as has been pointed out recently, there is really no gain
> to arguing about the merits of Shaw's policy. Even NANOG[3] differs[4]
> on whether that's a good idea.
> 
> I now return you to your regularly scheduled list traffic.
> 
> 
> [1] Yes, we all know what happens when you assume
>
> [2] It required reading documentation on sendmail and adding a single
> flag to the port options for 587. If you're using something else, it
> should be the same process. Read the documentation and then implement it.
>
> [3] North American Network Operators Group (www.nanog.org)
> 
> [4] has flame wars about

At least our discussion is still civil :)
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.3 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFGeFMOwRXgH3rKGfMRAmxyAJ9cpJ1BhUIUB3dBxMEzdsb1iU4MSQCggCuE
6EZKudoYQ6K6py8JswQytyg=
=Slfz
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----