Companies often expose SMTP Servers and not POP3/IMAP Servers outside
firewall.

The point is that you can always send mail or spam to anyone but you cannot
do a dictionary attack, guess passwords and read any mail.

ATRN/ETRN actually allow an SMTP Server to act as a mail reciever and also
mail publisher.

Here is a scenerio:
A hacker looks for valid userids by searching for '@<companyname>'
Does dictionary attack to find password. Say gets 5% of passwords on a
system that does not have good auditing.
Finds a mail server that has TURN commands, and then once in a while routes
mail to herself for those users.

Harmeet

PS: Polymorphism may be good and object oriented but Security folks are not
likely to know the advantages.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Harmeet Bedi" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "James Users List" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, June 12, 2002 5:36 PM
Subject: Re: ATRN


> FYI: ATRN is bad from a security point of view.
>
> Reason: "My need is for a simple device
> that simply queues mail and relays it on-demand, no delivery necessary."
> One can send (snail)mail to anyone in the directory, but I want to keep my
> own mail inbox hidden.
>
> Harmeet
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Jeff Schnitzer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Sent: Tuesday, June 11, 2002 7:32 PM
> Subject: ATRN
>
>
> I need to use ATRN to pull mail from a relay into an Exchange server
> which has a dynamic IP address.  Does James support ATRN?
>
> I'm guessing it doesn't, since a search of the mail archives and
> documentation turns up nada.
>
> The next question is:  How amenable is the James architecture to
> supporting ATRN?  I notice SMTP AUTH is already supported, which is
> good.  But I know relatively little (yet) about the internal workings of
> an MTA, so I don't know what else is needed.  Can James queue mail
> without delivery for a more or less indefinite time?  Does the
> architecture make it possible to easily take an inbound SMTP connection
> and reverse the client/server roles?
>
> If it's realistically possible for me to implement it in a week, I'm
> willing to grab the RFC and start hacking.  But I'm starting at the
> bottom of both the James and MTA learning curves, so I can't even
> evaluate the feasibility.
>
> Comments?
>
> ATRN would be a really cool feature to have, especially since neither
> sendmail nor qmail currently support it.  My need is for a simple device
> that simply queues mail and relays it on-demand, no delivery necessary.
>
> Jeff Schnitzer
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> --
> To unsubscribe, e-mail:
<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> For additional commands, e-mail:
<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
>
> --
> To unsubscribe, e-mail:
<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> For additional commands, e-mail:
<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>


--
To unsubscribe, e-mail:   <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
For additional commands, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

Reply via email to