Re: SMTP VRFY again

Jeffrey Walton via curl-users <[email protected]>
Newsgroups gmane.comp.web.curl.general
Message-ID <CAH8yC8nrk1Vu9BZq0kP-zSbyiYHvvdxMfjZny9od9f1x_ZxwKw@mail.gmail.com>
On Wed, Jun 7, 2023 at 2:24 PM Andrea Venturoli via curl-users
<[email protected]> wrote:
>
> I'm using libcurl to send emails via SMTP.
>
> In the past I was it by the fact that it uses VRFY, which is not
> supported on my mail server and I had to set option CURLOPT_UPLOAD to 1.
> Fine.
>
> This worked with 8.0.1.
> Then I upgraded to 8.1.0 due to security issues and later to 8.1.1: now
> I'm hit by the VRFY thing again (even if my code did not change).
>
> Is something different needed with these newer versions?
> Or is it a regression?

I _thought_ SMTP's VRFY command was frowned upon because it allowed
attackers to enumerate users. Then the actor could go lateral, like
using the username to try a login in another protocol like SSH.

I _think_ one of the things mail administrators do nowadays is to
always return success, even for non-existent users.

According to Bernstein at [1], rejecting VRFY is dangerous. Maybe you
should reach out to the mail admin on the site you are trying to send
mail to.

Jeff

[1] https://cr.yp.to/smtp/vrfy.html
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