Just a Theory

Trans rights are human rights

Posts about Mail

Getting Postfix to Send Mail From a Comcast Network

Since I moved to Comcast a while back, I have not received emails from this blog server telling me that comments have been left. This is a drag because spam comments can pile up for a while before I think to go looking for them and delete them. So today I took the time to figure out how to get Postfix to send mail through the Comcast server. Kudos to Kclug mail list post by “Lucas,” which explains the issue in very simple terms. The key is to tell Postfix to relay mail through the Comcast mail server on port 587 (which is the correct port for Comcast to use for their users to send mail) and to use your Comcast.net username and password to connect. So I put this in my main.cf:

relayhost = [smtp.comcast.net]:587
smtp_sasl_auth_enable = yes
smtp_sasl_password_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/sasl/passwd
smtp_sasl_security_options =

Then, following the instructions in this Freelock Knowledge Base article, I put this in my passwd file:

smtp.comcast.net    myusername:some_password

I actually had to contact Comcast to get my username and password, since I had never used the Comast mail server or other services before. But they gave it to me without problem. Then I just ran this and was good to go:

chown root:root /etc/postfix/sasl/passwd;
chmod 600 /etc/postfix/sasl/passwd
postmap /etc/postfix/sasl/passwd 
postfix reload

And now maybe someone else will stumble upon this blog entry when they’re Googling for a solution and get the help they need, too. No doubt I’ll be looking for it again in a year or so, the way things go.

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Windows Virus Hell

So to finish up development and testing of Test.Harness.Browser in IE 6 last week, I rebooted my Linux server (the one running justatheory.com) into Windows 98, got everything working, and rebooted back into Linux. I felt that the hour or two’s worth of downtime for my site was worth it to get the new version of Test.Simple out, and although I had ordered a new Dell, didn’t want to wait for it. And it worked great; I’m very pleased with Test.Simple 0.20.

But then, in unrelated news, I released Bricolage 1.9.0, the first development release towards Bricolage 1.10, which I expect to ship next month. One of the things I’m most excited about in this release is the new PHP templating support. So on George Schlossnagle’s advice, I sent an email to webmaster@php.net. It bounced. It was late on Friday, and I’m so used to bounces being problems on the receiving end, that I simply forwarded it to George with the comment, “What the?” and went to fix dinner for company.

Then this morning I asked George, via IM, if he’d received my email. He hadn’t. I sent it again; no dice. So he asked me to paste the bounce, and as I did so, looked at it more carefully. It had this important tidbit that I’d failed to notice before:

140.211.166.39 failed after I sent the message.
Remote host said: 550-5.7.1 reject content [xbl]
550 See http://master.php.net/mail/why.php?why=SURBL

“That’s curious,” I thought, and went to read the page in question. It said I likely had a domain name in my email associated with a blacklisted IP address. Well, there were only two domain names in that email, bricolage.cc and justatheory.com, and I couldn’t see how either one of them could have been identified as a virus host. But sure enough, a quick search of the CBL database revealed that the IP address for justatheory.com—and therefore my entire home LAN— had been blacklisted. I couldn’t imagine why; at first I thought maybe it was because of past instances of blog spam appearing here, but then George pointed out that the listing had been added on August 18. So I thought back…and realized that was just when I was engaging in my JavaScript debugging exercise.

Bloody Windows!

So I took steps to correct the problem:

  1. Update my router’s firmware. I’ve been meaning to do that for a while, anyway, and was hoping to get some new firewall features. Alas, no, but maybe I’ll be able to connect to a virtual PPTP network the next time I need to.

  2. Blocked all outgoing traffic from any computer on my LAN on port 25. I send email through my ISP, but use port 587 because I found in the last year that I couldn’t send mail on port 25 on some networks I’ve visited (such as in hotels). Now I know why: so that no network users inadvertently send out viruses from their Windows boxes! I’d rather just prevent certain hosts (my Windows boxen) from sending on port 25, but the router’s NAT is not that sophisticated. So I have to block them all.

  3. Rebooted the server back into Windows 98 and installed and ran Norton AntiVirus. This took forever, but found and fixed two instances of WIN32Mimail.l@mm and removed a spyware package.

  4. Rebooted back into Linux and cleared my IP address from the blacklist databases. I don’t expect to ever use that box for Windows again, now that I have the new Dimension.

The new box comes with Windows XP SP 2 and the Symantec tools, so I don’t expect it to be a problem, especially since it can’t use port 25. But this is a PITA, and I really feel for the IT departments that have to deal with this shit day in and day out.

What I don’t understand is how I got this virus, since I haven’t used Windows 98 in this computer in a long time. How long? Here’s a clue: When I clicked the link in Norton AntiVirus to see more information on WIN32Mimail.l@mm, Windows launched my default browser: Netscape Communicator! In addition, I don’t think I’ve used this box to check email since around 2000, and I never click on attachments from unknown senders, and never .exe or .scr files at all (my mail server automatically rejects incoming mail with such attachments, and has for at least a year).

But anyway, it’s all cleaned up now, and I’ve un-blacklisted my IP, so my emails should be deliverable again. But I’m left wondering what can be done about this problem. It’s easy for me to feel safe using my Mac, Linux, and FreeBSD boxes, but, really, what keeps the Virus and worm writers from targeting them? Nothing, right? Furthermore, what’s to stop the virus and worm writers from using port 587 to send their emails? Nothing, right? Once they do start using 587—and I’m sure they will—how will anyone be able to send mail to an SMTP server on one network from another network? Because you know that once 587 becomes a problem, network admins will shut down that port, too.

So what’s to be done about this? How can one successfully send mail to a server not on your local network? How will business people be able to send email through their corporate servers from hotel networks? I can see only a few options:

  • Require them to use a mail server on the local network. They’ll have to reconfigure their mail client to use it, and then change it back when they get back to the office. What a PITA. This might work out all right if there was some sort of DNS-like service for SMTP servers, but then there would then be nothing to prevent the virus software from using it, either.
  • You can’t. You have to authenticate onto the other network using a VPN. Lots of companies rely on this approach already, but smaller companies that don’t have the IT resources to set up a VPN are SOL. And folks just using their ISPs are screwed, too.
  • Create a new email protocol that’s inherently secure. This would require a different port, some sort of negotiation and authentication process, and a way for the hosting network to know that it’s cool to use. But this probably wouldn’t work, either, because then the virus software can also connect via such a protocol to a server that’s friendly to it, right?

None of these answers is satisfactory. I guess I’ll have to set up an authenticating SMTP server and a VPN for Kineticode once port 587 starts getting blocked. Anyone else got any brilliant solutions to this problem?

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