>(1) A message on this discussion list last month mentioned that the
>fact of having an "unknown" user account might trigger one of the
>open-relay detection services to flag the email server as
>exploitable. Does having an "unknown" account really create a
>security problem somehow, or is this basically a flaw in the methods
>of the open-relay detection systems?
I am fairly sure this is a flaw in the open-relay detection system. I
have been using Unknown for quite some time (since I started using SIMS
as a matter of fact), and have never had a mail relayed thru my system.
Pitfalls of the Unknown account... you can use one of the anti-spam
features (the one that bounces the mail if too many unknown users are hit
in the same message). And the other MAJOR pitfall... you are wide open to
be spam bombed... I have had that happen a few times now. Twice my server
Hard drive overloaded (I don't have a large hard drive) and it knocked
SIMS offline (well, crashed the whole machine). A few other times, it has
just been annoying as hell to see that 1000+ messages are waiting to
download (in those cases, I go to the server, and delete the mail
manually, I can dump them all in one shot that way). If I could, I would
turn off Unknown because of these annoyances... but alas, I can't
(business reasons, I need to be sure to catch ALL mispelled emails)
>(2) My "unknown" account is receiving a lot of junk email for a
>couple former users of the system, and I would prefer not to see it.
I would just route those accounts to spamtram and be done with it.
-chris
<http://www.mythtech.net>
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