Greetpause seems very ineffective (Was: RE: Increased Volumes Of Spam)

[Randal, Phil]

In the real world, resources aren't thrown at the problem, and you get
mail backlogs which can far exceed any delay "imposed" by GreetPause.

If you want instant transfer, use instant messaging, http, or ftp
uploads.

Cheers,

Phil

-----Original Message-----
From: mailscanner-bounces at lists.mailscanner.info
[mailto:mailscanner-bounces at lists.mailscanner.info] On Behalf Of Alex
Neuman
Sent: Saturday, January 20, 2007 2:25 PM
To: MailScanner discussion
Subject: Re: Greetpause seems very ineffective (Was: RE: Increased
Volumes Of Spam)

In my particular case I've had to turn off greylisting for a few  
servers because the owners would rather throw more resources at the  
problem (cpu, ram, etc.) to check mail after it's received. Most  
people I know get used to the additional delay after a while, but  
there are some users who are more... let's call it "recalcitrant".

In any case, GreetPause became a permanent addition to the "bat-belt"  
as soon as it came out. No cases of collateral damage so far, as with  
FPs in RBL's and so on, and it works not just against slammers but a  
lot of DOS situations as well.

If I had only one thing to pick to keep from my setup it would be  
GreetPause.

On Jan 19, 2007, at 7:52 PM, Scott Silva wrote:

> Durval Menezes spake the following on 1/19/2007 4:05 PM:
>> Hello folks,
>>
>> Scott Silva <ssilva at sgvwater.com> on Tue, Jan 16, 2007 at 10:24:11  
>> -0800, wrote:
>>> Greetpause does help a lot, as I probably drop 10 to 20% of the  
>>> spam with it
>>> alone. Five seconds is a good starting point, but probably not  
>>> over 30
>>> seconds.
>>
>> The first time I became aware of GreetPause, I dismissed it as  
>> probably
>> not very effective, because it would be very simple for spammers  
>> to adapt
>> by just stopping the slam; on the negative side, it would end up  
>> slowing
>> ALL traffic, including the legitimate (non-spam) emails.
>>
>> Then I came upon Scott's (and others) recommendations, as above,  
>> and I
>> wondered if my initial analysis was incorrect; today, I found the  
>> time
>> to configure one of my servers to use GreetPause, and measured its
>> efficiency using pause intervals of 1s, 5s and 10s. The numbers I
>> obtained are as follows:
>>
>> Pause:    GreetPause:  total connections:	pre-greet/conexoes:
>> 1s     		 14          645         	2.17%
>> 5s      	 19          383         	4.96%
>> 10s      	 36          535         	6.73%
>>
>> What's worse, about 80% of the connections blocked by GreetPause  
>> would
>> have been blocked anyway by the MTA using RBLs alone, so the  
>> *effective*
>> Greetpause improvement over using RBLs alone would be about 1% or  
>> less,
>> even with relativelly large (10s) pauses.
>>
>> I've rechecked my analysis and found no mistakes; are you folks  
>> *really*
>> measuring GreetPause efficiency and finding these 10-20% numbers,  
>> or are
>> you deriving these numbers more from "feeling" or something? What  
>> other
>> explanations for the above discrepancies can you think of?
>>
>> If anyone wants to sift through my logs, I can make then avalable;
>> just ask.
>>
>> Thanks in advance for any and all input.
>>
>> Best Regards,
> Many cannot use all the good blacklists, and greetpause does catch  
> some of the
> newer spammers that haven't hit the blacklists yet.
>
> -- 
>
> MailScanner is like deodorant...
> You hope everybody uses it, and
> you notice quickly if they don't!!!!
>
> -- 
> MailScanner mailing list
> mailscanner at lists.mailscanner.info
> http://lists.mailscanner.info/mailman/listinfo/mailscanner
>
> Before posting, read http://wiki.mailscanner.info/posting
>
> Support MailScanner development - buy the book off the website!

-- 
MailScanner mailing list
mailscanner at lists.mailscanner.info
http://lists.mailscanner.info/mailman/listinfo/mailscanner

Before posting, read http://wiki.mailscanner.info/posting

Support MailScanner development - buy the book off the website!