OpenBSD Journal

Reducing spam with OpenBSD and spamd

Contributed by SolarCatcher on from the dept.

Over at linux.com, Terrell Prudé, Jr. has published an article on how to use OpenBSD to fight spam. His reasons for chosing OpenBSD for the task:
1. OpenBSD is secure and solid.
2. OpenBSD comes with a tool to stop the spam before it even gets sent: spamd, a "fake" Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) server that accepts SMTP connections and decides whether a sender is a spammer or not.

Find this introductory article at http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=07/03/28/1522252

A second article shall explain how to configure spamd.

(Comments are closed)


Comments
  1. By Anonymous Coward (24.37.242.64) on

    Thank you very much for this!

    Comments
    1. By Terrell Prude' Jr. (151.188.247.104) microman@cmosnetworks.com on

      > Thank you very much for this!

      You're quite welcome. But the OpenBSD team is really to thank because they are the ones who made this wonderful software. The article was written in tribute to them, and the proceeds from the article are going to them.

      As a matter of fact, the period ending this sentence contains one of my greytrapping addresses, using an "a href" tag. Yep, you just passed it. There's another one in the previous paragraph. They are thus hidden from humans, but, heh heh, not the spambots. :-) Just take a look at the HTML source for this post; I point this out as a demonstration to all of you of one effective way to do greytrapping. I do this kind of thing everywhere that I can.

      I also feel it appropriate to note here that I am one of those "Linux guys" that so many here seem to despise. I'm not your enemy, folks. I'm your ally.

      --TP

      Comments
      1. By dude mannn (dude-mannn) on

        > I also feel it appropriate to note here that I am one of those "Linux guys" that so many here seem to despise. I'm not your enemy, folks. I'm your ally.
        >
        > --TP
        >



        "If you know your brother is a greedy bastard
        never give him the password
        If he goes penguin on you,
        stop - being - his brother."


        Dear TP:

        ubuntu warm and fuzzy
        puffy goes down hard

        MG

        Comments
        1. By Anonymous Coward (151.188.247.104) on

          > > I also feel it appropriate to note here that I am one of those "Linux guys" that so many here seem to despise. I'm not your enemy, folks. I'm your ally.
          > >
          > > --TP
          > >
          >
          >
          >
          > "If you know your brother is a greedy bastard
          > never give him the password
          > If he goes penguin on you,
          > stop - being - his brother."
          >
          >
          > Dear TP:
          >
          > ubuntu warm and fuzzy
          > puffy goes down hard
          >
          > MG


          :-)

          --TP

  2. By frantisek holop (165.72.200.11) on

    > There's one other handy thing that spamd can do for us. Spamd can
    > optionally monitor your mail logs and automatically whitelist the
    > destination email servers of anyone to whom you send email. 
    
    what is he talking about?
    

    Comments
    1. By Anonymous Coward (128.131.95.19) on

      >
      > what is he talking about?

      spamlogd(8)

      Comments
      1. By frantisek holop (165.72.200.11) on

        oh, i see now, thanks.
        the wording in the article confused me.
        

        Comments
  3. Comments
    1. By Xipher (12.219.26.162) on

      >
      > A bit dated perhaps. 4.1 spamd is a bit different from
      > what he's describing
      >

      That is because he is using 4.0 for the article. He probably wrote it a while back and wanted to use what was easily available rather then the current cvs versions or snapshots.

      Comments
      1. By Terrell Prude' Jr. (151.188.247.104) microman@cmosnetworks.com on

        > > > > A bit dated perhaps. 4.1 spamd is a bit different from > > what he's describing > > > > That is because he is using 4.0 for the article. He probably wrote it a while back and wanted to use what was easily available rather then the current cvs versions or snapshots.

        You are correct on all counts. The first draft was in late January, then I went on vacation for a bit, which of course took up some time. I did indeed use 4.0 for the article, as that was (and, to date, still is) the current stable version. It doesn't look like 4.1 spamd will be all that different, according to my reading of the changelogs, so the information should still be applicable. The biggest change for me is that we won't have to throw the -g switch anymore, since greylisting will be turned on by default.

        --TP

  4. By Yves (87.194.39.146) on

    No sign of the followup promised "tomorrow".

    Comments

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