Fairly rude surprise in logs this AM -- possible DoS attempt?

Tue Jan 20 11:29:51 PST 2004

<quote who="Roy S. Rapoport">
> I call "shennanigans," David, and I call "shennanigans" on their
> explanation that they're proxy-testing you.  Either they're lying or
> they're horribly misconfigured and rude.  Either way, they're not playing
> nice.
>
> RR designed its systems so it would test a sender at MOST once a week.
> That test would involve one, and only one, SMTP connection.  There's
> nothing else you need to do to verify whether or not something is an open
> relay.

I believe you are mixing up "open relay" with "open proxy".

Open Relay = mis-configured MTA (MS Exchange, etc...) port 25
Open Proxy = mis-configured TCP Proxy (WinGate, etc...) port any

> Anything else is them rattling the door on your house trying to see if
> you're using a good lock -- MAYBE they're making sure you're not a
> crackhouse, but it's far more likely that they're casing the joint.
>
> IMHO.
>
> -roy
>

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       -MCP