trapdoor.merit.edu and other impatient Postfix mailers everywhere (fwd)

Mitch Halmu mitch at netside.net
Thu Aug 2 22:02:11 UTC 2001



On Thu, 2 Aug 2001, Derek Balling wrote:

> At 5:17 PM -0400 8/2/01, Mark Radabaugh - Amplex wrote:
> >I think MAPS managed to DOS themselves.  Since they are refusing queries
> >BIND can't cache the response and so it just keeps trying with every new
> >e-mail.  The traffic hitting MAPS servers has to be impressive.
> 
> This seems very similar to what happened to a couple of the ORBS 
> mirrors when ORBS shut down.
> 
> Eventually, one of them decided to just start returning "127.0.0.2" 
> for every lookup (or some such), which caused lots of people to 
> reject-all-mail until they fixed their configs.
> 
> Not that I think MAPS would do such a thing, but it may be one of the 
> few ways they can fix the large installed base pointing at them and 
> not ceasing as they're supposed to.

Which is to show you what can happen to those that entrust control of
their communications to a third party. The commercialization of the lil'
MAPS charity proves beyond a reasonable doubt that it was just another
clever ploy for them to make a living at it. The brilliant idea: have
everybody pay a small toll on email. Blackhole thy opponents. Quote:

"There will be a day when folks will need to pay to transit email."
(Paul Vixie, 1998)

That day has come.

The inclusion of maps.vix.com references in the sendmail code has lead 
to predictable consequences. Let's hope this will serve as a warning to
all sysadmins who can infere what's wrong with enterprises like MAPS 
from this incident.

--Mitch
NetSide



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