On Wed, Oct 28, 2009 at 01:00:42PM +0000, Mike Cardwell wrote:
> > Dean Brooks wrote:
> >> Here's what we use to automatically control failed authentication
> >> attempts.
>
> If a client makes a single connection to your SMTP server then makes a 
> million attempts to authenticate using different credentials each time, 
> wouldn't that only increment the ratelimit value by 1 as it only 
> increments the value on Exit... Eg, in the following example I make 
> three different authentication failures but only quit once:

Took me a few minutes to remember why this wasn't a problem and finally
remembered.

A failed auth attempt counts as a "non-mail" command and increments
the counter against the global "smtp_accept_max_nonmail" setting.
It defaults to 10 but we have it set to "3" on our system:

  smtp_accept_max_nonmail = 3

So, essentially, they can at most execute 3 attempts per connection
and a maximum of 15 connection failures using the ratelimits.
Essentially up to 45 failed auth attempts.

--
Dean Brooks
[email protected]

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