Re: Majordomo and spammers

The script to which I referbelow ran overnight, and worked mostly.  All 
blank messages were successfully deleted; the remaining messages were 
sequentially renumbered; the digests were created and sucessfully mailed out 
to the subscribers.

There was one problem.  Two messages in the queue for each list were not 
picked up and included in the digest for each list.  Perhaps it is only 
co-incidence, but the number of the omitted messages in each case were 004 
and 005.

Also, probably really a co-incidence, for one list the first message was 
from Tokyo with a response to that message; in the second list, both omitted 
messages were in response to a message from Tokyo ???

Looking further into the problem now.

-Tom

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Tom Patterson" <[email protected]>
To: "Daniel Liston" <[email protected]>
Sent: Friday, July 11, 2008 6:19 PM
Subject: Re: Majordomo and spammers


> Thanks Dan,
>
> Maybe you are correct in the graphical nature of the problem, but I doubt 
> it.
>
> I have two lists with about 700-750 mostly long time members.  They know 
> that majordomo strips off any image files, and should not be submitting 
> any. If they did, it would only be an occasional image - right now, I am 
> getting a lot of these zero files.  Prior to installing Joe's patch, I was 
> able to tie the date and time of these blank files to the time that 
> majordomo was bouncing messages back to the spammers.  Also, I did not 
> have this problem on my old server which also used demime.  The problem 
> started when I moved to a new server.
>
> I have already looked to see what files are queued up for the digests, and 
> there are zero content files sitting there, and arriving regularly.  The 
> sequence problem I was running into seems to have ocurred as a result of 
> deleting these zero files.  The solution now appears to be in renaming and 
> renumbering these files so that they start with 001.  When I did that 
> earlier today, I was able to pick them up in digests.
>
> I now have a script which will be tried with the cron job tonight.  It 
> will delete all zero content files, and then rename and renumber the 
> remaining files immediately prior to calling the cron job to create the 
> digest.  If it works, the problem will be solved.
>
> I have no idea what is different now than with the earlier server, except 
> for the mail program.   Whatever, I will keep you posted on the outcome.
>
> -Tom
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Daniel Liston" <[email protected]>
> To: <[email protected]>
> Sent: Friday, July 11, 2008 5:58 PM
> Subject: Re: Majordomo and spammers
>
>
>>I have a sneaky suspicion that your spam may be graphical in nature, where 
>>there is no body content, just an attached graphic.
>> Demime removes the HTML content, leaving an empty message (just assuming 
>> here), before your aliases file passes the
>> converted message to your -outgoing alias where the digest script is 
>> called.  You are probably creating your own problem in
>> this case.
>>
>> As for the sequentiality of your pre-digest files, I have seen this too, 
>> in some cases.  The solution is another patch...  I offer
>> this piece of an email that I sent in September of 2003.
>>
>>> Do the timestamps on the digest.$$ messages coincide with times that
>>> email was received for your list?  Have you looked in the
>>> $digest_work_dir
>>> to see what files are queued up in there?  Are there any skipped
>>> numbers in the sequence of files?  You might need to modify line
>>> #176 of the digest script to say
>>>
>>>          foreach (sort @files) {
>>>
>>> to clean things up.  You might also consider creating a tmp directory
>>> in the majordomo $HOME (or work directory if they are different) with
>>> the proper majordomo ownership and permission, then setting $TMPDIR in
>>> the majordomo.cf to use that directory.
>> In fact, I found reference to the same change on line 176 of digest in a 
>> posting from Sept 2000 too.
>>
>> Dan Liston
>>
>> Tom Patterson wrote:
>>> Thanks to Joe for help on this problem.  The patch immediately cut out 
>>> the messages which were bouncing back to me due to the use of invalid 
>>> e-mail addresses by the spammers.
>>>
>>> I am however left with the problem that majordomo is still picking up on 
>>> the spam messages and creating zero content messages in the digest 
>>> folder.  When the digest is created, it then shows these messages, 
>>> albeit as blank.
>>>
>>> I have a script which deletes all zero content messages in the digest 
>>> folder immediately before the mkdigest command is issued by a cron job. 
>>> The problem then arises that the remaining messages are not sequentially 
>>> numbered in the digest folder, and do not all get picked up by the 
>>> digest. I can get around this problem by renumbering the messages, 
>>> starting from zero.
>>>
>>> Also, I have two lists.  Only the list starting with the letter "s" is 
>>> picking up the blank messages.  The list starting with the letter "v" 
>>> does not pick up blank messages.
>>>
>>> As the spam is addressed to majordomo@domainname, I assume that 
>>> majordomo is dumping the blank messages into the first folder he comes 
>>> to.  I also assume that if I created a dummy list starting with a alpha 
>>> character prior to "s", the zero messages would end up there, leaving my 
>>> list folders unaffected by the spam.  I will try this next.
>>>
>>> However, is there some way to prevent majordomo from creating these zero 
>>> content messages?
>>>
>>> -Tom
>>>
>>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Joe R. Jah" 
>>> <[email protected]>
>>> To: "Tom Patterson" <[email protected]>
>>> Cc: <[email protected]>
>>> Sent: Wednesday, July 09, 2008 9:51 PM
>>> Subject: Re: Majordomo and spammers
>>>
>>>
>>>> On Wed, 9 Jul 2008, Tom Patterson wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Date: Wed, 9 Jul 2008 06:04:38 -0500
>>>>> From: Tom Patterson <[email protected]>
>>>>> To: [email protected]
>>>>> Subject: Majordomo and spammers
>>>>>
>>>>> I have recently moved my site to a new server using Q Mail, and 
>>>>> reinstalled Majordomo.  I am having two problems.
>>>>>
>>>>> 1.  I am getting hit with a great amount of spam addressed to 
>>>>> majordomo, which is generating replies to non-existent addresses, 
>>>>> which in turn bounce back to me.  The replies are the standard reply 
>>>>> from majordomo when it does not understand a message.
>>>>>      Is there any way of stopping these replies from Majordomo or of 
>>>>> changing the majordomo's address from [email protected]?
>>>>>
>>>>> 2.  All of these spam messages to majordomo are generating zero 
>>>>> content messages in the digest folder, which in turn, adds blank 
>>>>> messages to the digest.  How can this be fixed?
>>>>>
>>>>> -Tom
>>>>
>>>> ftp://ftp.ccsf.org/majordomo-patches/1.94.5/noCommand_noBounce.0
>>>>
>>>> Regards,
>>>>
>>>> Joe
>>>> -- 
>>>>     _/   _/_/_/       _/              ____________    __o
>>>>     _/   _/   _/      _/         ______________     _-\<,_
>>>> _/  _/   _/_/_/   _/  _/                     ......(_)/ (_)
>>>>  _/_/ oe _/   _/.  _/_/ ah        [email protected]
>>>>
>>>
>>
>