I have a postfix/dovecot installation on the same server as my company's webapp. This webapp involves a lot of regular data entry, which is a real pain to do using HTML forms. What I would really like to do is be able to send structured emails to the server, and have postfix pass them through a transport to the webapp (a Django site), which would parse the emails and do CRUD stuff with the database.
I can figure the details out myself, but I'm hoping to get advice on one particular question: security. I guess the safest thing would be to require logged-in users: presumably I could find a way to only accept emails from a local account, but that would require everyone who had access to this system to have an account on the server. The other option would be to maintain a list of authorized email addresses, and then check incoming messages against this list. This would be preferable, in that I don't have to bother users to create and set up (and remember to use) a separate email account. My question is, is there a truly secure way of only accepting emails from authorized addresses? Or should I just go with option one and require users to have accounts? Any voices of experience/authority very welcome... Yours, Eric
