Stop SPAM. 1

[meekrob]

If you operate a mail server and have not been tested for an open relay I highly recomend you do so. An open relay can allow a spammer to hijack your email server and relay massive amounts of spam through it. This is obviously bad for the internet community in general but it is also bad for you. Besides eating up your bandwidth and CPU resources you will probably end up becoming listed on one of many anti-spam lists. This is bad. Check out the FAQ at ordb for more info:

http://ordb.org/faq/

Do I have an open relay?
You can also test your server at ordb.

http://ordb.org/submit/

How do I close an open relay in Exchange 2000?
Here is a FAQ I wrote. Feel free to let me know if it sucks, and I will update it.

http://www.tek-tips.com/faqs.cfm?spid=858&sfid=1592&CFID=48092435&CFTOKEN=27212027

(if the link breaks just go to the FAQ section - it's not hard to find)

 

[Xybertron]

Your FAQ is the default configuration. Please correct me if I am wrong. Dan
Microsoft Exchange Support @ Microsoft

 

[meekrob]

Yes and no. The point of the FAQ is that admins need to be aware of what IP's they allow and:

"The best practice here is to choose Only the list below. That way anything that is not explicitly allowed is denied. Add the IP addresses that need to use your server as a relay. In other words all your clients that send email using SMTP."

This kind of security simply can't come in a default configuration. For example my relay is set to communicate with only one IP - the gateway server.

Maybe the faq needs a little more polish... I'm just trying to point people in the right direction. If you want to give me some more information about the default configuration I can add that. I can't actually remember exactly what the default config was...

However if you are saying that admins should not be aware of relay security because Exchange has a secure default configuration I disagree. Read Microsoft Security Bulletin MS02-011. Open relay tests are as essential to an email admin as an AIDS test is essential to a porn star. In my opinion =)

Off topic: BTW thanks for your help earlier ... it looks like my problem is client side and not server side.

 

[Xybertron]

Only the list below is the default config. That is what I was getting at Dan
Microsoft Exchange Support @ Microsoft