[Wylug-discuss] Re: SMTP standards (was Please confirm...)

[gARetH baBB]

On Sun, 28 Mar 2004, Peter Corlett wrote:

> It's not lost, it's just not being accepted. That's a subtle, but important
> distinction.

Nah, I reject - at the RCPT stage. Which means technically, I'm not
actually rejecting the HELO ...

Something coming in with a HELO of my IP or my domain is obviously bogus,
I'm not interested in what they have to offer and I haven't seen anything
in the logs but obvious spam runs using such tactics.

buggles, which isn't even the primary MX for ccl4.org, rejects loads of
shit just through bogus HELO - there's a long run which has been going on
for days at the moment, it must have rejected 100s of spam this week
through that simple check alone.

One of the past tedious Windows virus sent an unqualified HELO (ie. just
the machine name), none of that got through either and that was thousands
of the silly things.

> The contents of RFC 821 are moot, as it is obsoleted by RFC 2821. RFC 821
> should only be read if one is looking for a historical perspective, and
> definitely not as a standards document.

Quite a number of systems block on bogus HELO, including Nigel's exim
setup which this list is on - he does actually reject at HELO.