At 4:45 PM -0500 3/11/02, Stefan Jeglinski  imposed structure on a 
stream of electrons, yielding:
>>AFAIK, SIMS does not do a reverse look-up on the connecting IP address. It
>>only does a forward look-up on the domain name claimed in the HELO/EHLO
>>argument (karabalta.kg in this case). If it resolves to an address that
>>matches the connection, then SIMS marks it as 'verified'. That is apparently
>>not the case here (since karabalta.kg. resolves to 192.168.0.1 not
>>195.38.186.2), so it's unclear to me why SIMS would mark it as verified. That
>>would seem to be erroneous.
>
>Good point. It might appear though, based on this example, that SIMS 
>does not cross check the A record that is returned against the 
>connecting IP, only that -some- A record is returned.

No, you missed it. SIMS  does no reverse lookup at all. It does a 
query for an A record for the name claimed by the sender, and sees if 
it matches the connecting IP.

>If true, then SIMS might at least put a check in for obviously bogus 
>A records (in this example, a private IP) and note such.

I think this one is a case of changed DNS.

>Or are there hidden issues I'm unaware of?


The SOA for karabalta.kg shows a serial number which implies that the 
zone was changed twice on 2002-03-07. Was that after that spam 
arrived?

>Feature request?

Actually, yes. I'd like to see SIMS look at the local blacklist when 
it checks HELO names and when it verifies return paths. If the HELO 
name resolves to something blacklisted that isn't the connecting 
address, that is at least worth a red flag in the Received header. If 
a return-path domain part is valid but has an MX or A that is 
blacklisted, the message should probably be rejected.


-- 
Bill Cole                                  
[EMAIL PROTECTED]


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