Full Disclosure mailing list archives

Block notification / bounce mails (as in DDOS)


From: Security <koen4security () hotmail com>
Date: Thu, 01 Apr 2004 16:05:51 +0200

Hi,

Recently, this question popped up during my job interview

<question>
What would you do when a spammer uses your mail-address as the "From:" and the mails that are sent by the spammer get all bounced back by legitimated mail-servers to your mailhandlers? All the bounces would return to you - as you are the 'from' (assume a rate of 1.000 a minute) and this traffic would kill your network-connection. You wouldn't be able to receive any mail because your mailserver can no longer handle the load
</question>

I had a 'Dilbert' reaction in the sense that I couldn't come up with a decent answer (needless to say their impression indicated that I should not expect them to hire me). I could only offer these solutions :

* contact my ISP and search for a decent solution
* put a notice on our corporate website and indicate that we are no longer available through mail on the old address but have a 'new' temporarily one * try to investigate, through the e-mail headers (allthough they could be fake), from where the original posts are coming and try to contact the isp of that netblock

What do you all suggest to this 'seemingly' DDOS-attack (allthough not intended as a DOS)?

Greetings,

Koen

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