dealing with dictionary attacks

[Steve Campbell]

How do we deal with dictionary attacks?

Steve Campbell
campbell at cnpapers.com
Charleston Newspapers

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Drew Marshall" <drew at technologytiger.net>
To: "MailScanner discussion" <mailscanner at lists.mailscanner.info>
Sent: Friday, March 09, 2007 4:32 PM
Subject: Re: dealing with dictionary attacks


> 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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