On Monday 10 March 2003 22:16, Michael Satterwhite wrote:
We had a problem at a client's site this morning that you might want to be aware of. Linux might be immune to it, but I'm not sure of this.
Their Notes SMTP server went into a loop. It turned out that a return receipt to (what appeared to be) a spam site had been sent. The site was
nomail.www.tv (I don't remember the username that was in front of it)
This site resolves to 127.0.0.1 (localhost) on both Window$ and Unix.
it resolves to 127.0.0.1 in dns. It's not a windows/unix issue
The log was being flooded with error messages because of the problems caused by it sending this message to itself. The server was so bogged down that it took us forever to bring SMTP down. Once down, we configured it to avoid this type of loop, of course. The circumstances of a spam message asking for a return receipt to a site that would resolve to the localhost seems malicious to me, but I guess it *COULD* be an ignorant mistake.
the name *nomail* seems to indicate that it's a definite purpose. most non-broken mailers detect when an address resolves to itself, notes it, and moves on. Notes/Domino mail, on the other hand, is severely broken in many respects.
As I said, I don't know if this can / would cause a problem to Linux SMTP.
It has nothing to do with linux or windows, it's an MTA issue. File a bug report with IBM