RE: The open relay problem.

On Fri, 2004-04-02 at 00:23 -0600, Seth Goodman wrote:
> >  And suppose that this mail I send results in a DSN that I really want
> >  to see.
> >  It will get to the authorised MTA address for [email protected]
> >  (possible wrapped up in SRS if the MTA does that) and the MTA will
> >  forward it to [email protected].  But obviously that MTA cannot
> >  wrap the to address in an SRS that we will accept, so my (cse) MTA
> >  will get Mail From:<>, Rcpt to:<[email protected]> and my MTA
> >  might feel inclined to reject it. Which I would rather it didn't.

This is a real issue, yes.

Seth, I think you're misunderstanding. Imagine the case of a .forward
file redirecting mail to [email protected] -> [email protected]

Something sends mail from [email protected] which bounces. The
bounce is delivered to ftp.uk.linux.org which tries to forward it to
[email protected]. This is now a bounce being delivered to the 'raw'
address [email protected], and it's rejected.

One solution for this is to use an address other than the 'raw' address
for forwarding to -- '[email protected]', for example.

It's not perfect, but it's a lot less broken than the alternatives I've
found so far.

-- 
dwmw2