dealing with dictionary attacks

[Drew Marshall]

On 9 Mar 2007, at 20:59, Rick Chadderdon wrote:

> Res wrote:
>> I beg to difer, a recent check of archives shows pf has the most
>> problems with MS, and its a well known fact,m even admitted to b ythe
>> regular postmix weenies.
> Just for reference, my archives - which are complete from Aug 08,  
> 2005 -
> have a count of 3589 posts with the word "sendmail" in the body and  
> 2269
> with "postfix".  I made no effort to read all of those posts to rate
> their content, but the numbers lead me to think that your comment  
> might
> be a bit biased.  Let's just say that people working with *any* mail
> server that they're unfamiliar with are going to have questions and
> problems for which they will seek help.  This is a great place to find
> it, and being helpful even when a post is ostenibly off-topic can only
> help MailScanner's popularity.

We knew he was wrong any way :-)

>
> I don't think that "this topic doesn't belong here" and "your mail
> server sucks" replies help anyone, and if one is asking questions  
> about
> Postfix+MailScanner, this list is a far better place to look for help
> than the Postfix list.  Even if the question seems to relate to just
> Postfix, if it even gets mentioned in passing that one is using
> MailScanner in a message to the Postifix list, sometimes the entire
> thread degrades into anti-MailScanner rhetoric.

Absolutely agreed. I would whole hartedly agree that any one who uses  
Postfix with MailScanner shouldn't mention it in public to the  
Postfix list or you stand a good chance of being tar and feathered  
and being obliged to hang an 'unclean' bell round your mail electrons  
for the rest of you life.

>
> As an aside, I've used probably every major Unix mail server over the
> last 15-20 years, and a few of the minor ones.  (As well as several on
> Windows, a couple of which were quite good.  Exchange doesn't count
> among the good ones.)  My current choice is Postfix, for a number of
> reasons - none of which make me a weenie.  I know sendmail very well,
> although I have to admit to not using it much since I switched to  
> qmail
> in 1997-1998.  I no longer use qmail, sendmail, exim or courier for a
> variety of reasons.  I don't call people who choose any of those (or
> other) servers names, although I could certainly think of some for
> people who insist on using either sendmail or qmail.  (Bendmail
> weenies?  Nah, too derivative...  :P )

You have to remember that Res, being the list's number 1 resident  
nasty guy, he does 'fire from the hip' and one should make allowances  
for this ;-)

I feel quite safe saying this publicly as he will be very busy  
patching all those 'Bendmail' boxes with Steve's patch to prevent  
swapping, while checking his lock type and patching against the next  
security hole :-)

(While I, as a Postfix user, will just reply to myself as is our want)

:-)

Drew

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