Re: [slang] latest spamming attacks

[Oezguer Kesim <kesim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Thus spake John E. Davis (davis@xxxxxxxxxxxxx):

> >Till then, a workaround will hopefully prohibit spams.  Unfortunetly, this
> >means, that your "Return-Path: " address must be the same as the address
> >you are subscribed with, whenever you sent mail to the list.
> 
> I manually added a `Return-Path' header to this message.  However, I
> did not see any such header in the several of the messages that I
> looked at on this list.  Which mailers generate such a header?  Will
> the header be required after the software upgrade?

Actually it is not directly the Return-Path: headerfield, but the sender of
a email in SMTP (simple mail transfer protocol) which maybe distinct from the
"From: "-field in the mail-header.  Anyways, many MTAs (mail transfer
agent) put that (SMTP-)sender into the header, f.e. as Return-Path: entry.
So, whenever I say "Return-Path: "-entry I mean the sender of a
mail given to babayaga.math.fu-berlin.de per SMTP's "MAIL FROM:"

The Return-Path: header is never set by MUAs (mail user agents) but by
MTAs.  That's the tricky point.  In general everything should work fine,
but on some sites, the Return-Path: field depends on the _machine_-name of
the network of the corresponding site and thats where the problems start;
here an example:
You subscribe to slang-workers from such a site bar.org at machine
foo.bar.org.  Your Return-Path: will look like
		Return-Path: user@xxxxxxxxxxx
Now, you are subscribed exactly as "user@xxxxxxxxxxx" and will receive mail
to that adress which in general works fine.  But when you now write a mail
from a different machine, like buz.bar.org, your Return-Path:  will be
different and you can't be recognized as a subscriber and will receive a
error message.

Again, this is only a problem when your sites postmaster doesn't configure
the mail transfer agent properly and hides all machine-names so that
the Return-Path: will always look like
		Return-Path: user@xxxxxxx

The problem also occurs whenever you post from offsite.

cheers,
  oec

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