BigPond floodgate wide open to spammers - News

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This story was printed from ZDNet Australia.
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BigPond floodgate wide open to spammers

By Rachel Lebihan, ZDNet Australia News
August 27, 2001
URL: http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/soa/BigPond-floodgate-wide-open-to-spammers/0,139023165,120257048,00.htm

A flaw in at least one BigPond email server allows spammers to hijack the infrastructure to send bulk emails, resulting in the Telstra server being blacklisted and innocent outgoing emails bouncing back to users, according to comments posted on a broadband users' forum.

The problem is due to the incorrect configuration of at least one Telstra email server, according to an announcement on www.whirlpool.net.au This server is categorised as an "open relay" because it allows anybody to relay outgoing emails through the server without being a BigPond user - an open invitation to spammers who send thousands of unsolicited emails, leaving Telstra (and its end users) to cop the cost.

Online organisations, such as Relay Spam Stopper (RSS), test servers and publish information of those that are insecure - providing administrators with the means to block their servers to incoming emails from open relay servers. These emails bounce back to the sender.

-We've started noticing a large number of our emails bouncing back," Whirlpool's Dan Warne told ZDNet Australia. "Telstra really should have this basic security issue sorted out by now."

Warne claims that protecting a mail server form relay access is "extremely simple" to do and that BigPond users will have -ongoing issues" until the telco heavyweight patches the hole.

"It points to a business problem at their [Telstra's] end - they haven't audited the security of servers adequately," Warne said.

Telstra said it was aware of the problem and was investigating whether it was one of its own servers or that of a customer that was wrongly configured.

The RSS Web site has a database of -spam on file" which is purportedly sent from BigPond servers.

-A well-configured mail server should not relay third-party email, otherwise the server is subject to attack and hijack by Internet vandals and spammers," an RSS message says.