This is an off topic post from my local LUG list, but pretty interesting. Sort
of spells out the dangers of open mail relays. I wonder if spam would be
ended instantly if we all set one up...
---------- Forwarded Message ----------
Subject: [plug] [OT] open relay honeypot
Date: Fri, 17 Jan 2003 14:41:06 +0800
From: Luke Dudney
To: plug@plug.linux.org.au
A few weeks ago I set up an smtp open relay honeypot using postfix on the end
of my DSL line (set mynetworks to the entire world and disabled the 'smtp'
transport). It appears to be an open relay but does not actually deliver the
message. It took less than a day to be found by the spammers, and in the
last three days usage on it has gone through the roof (559 different hosts
connected to it!) The initial connections I got were apparently probes
(empty message to a throwaway hotmail/yahoo accounts with my IP as the
Subject). I forwarded these on manually to give the spammers false
positives.
It gives me a good feeling to know that there are 248,977 less spam messages
in 241,978 less peoples' inboxes! I wonder how much spam would be stopped if
there were a whole lot more similar honeypots on the net.
The things I do for fun ;)
Luke
Grand Totals
------------
messages
190615 received
248977 delivered
0 forwarded
0 deferred
0 bounced
0 rejected
327355k bytes received
614m bytes delivered
118607 senders
4829 sending hosts/domains
241978 recipients
9116 recipient hosts/domains
smtpd
3034 connections
559 hosts/domains
651 avg. connect time (seconds)
548:37:48 total connect time
Per-Day Traffic Summary
date received delivered deferred bounced rejected
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Jan 11 2003 537
Jan 12 2003 1441 1197
Jan 13 2003 1446 1441
Jan 14 2003 19183 1447
Jan 15 2003 82460 107321
Jan 16 2003 84455 93365
Jan 17 2003 1093 44206
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