Security Basics mailing list archives

RE: virus mail ignores MX?


From: "Keith T. Morgan" <keith.morgan () terradon com>
Date: Mon, 21 Jun 2004 11:03:24 -0400

More than 70% of our spam that is blocked is blocked at the secondary
MX.  I agree and fully believe that spammers seem to be targeting
secondary MX's directly, and most likely for the reasons listed below.
We've seen instances where the same spam message is delivered to both
mail exchangers.  This is likely spammers hoping that one has less
anti-spam filtering than the other.


Hence even if the RFC had specified a MUST, a virus writer 
could make an intelligent guess that a backup MX server is 
probably not as well protected as the primary server and 
hence better his/her chances by violating the RFC, and using 
the backup server. Any protection against such an attack 
would involve too much state tracking and is probably not 
worth the effort. Its much better to protect all servers equally.

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