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Re: [OT] Has my e-mail account been hacked?



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Hi,

On 14/10/2015 1:09 PM, Stuart Longland wrote:
>> No.  My id on this mail server is "zlinuxman".  I have no idea
>> who "thecoughingcanary" is.  Nor do I understand why the SMTP
>> server would allow "thecoughingcanary" to send out e-mails in my
>> name, unless "thecoughingcanary" is an administrator account.

Yes, that can be a serious problem; any ONE user can compromise others.

> This is making a lot more sense now.  So 'wowway.com' is your ISPs 
> server, and 'thecoughingcanary' is another customer of theirs.
> Likely a compromised one.  Your ISP needs to know about this.

Yep.

> Why did it allow the email to be relayed?  Well, the credentials
> were correct, that's all that was needed.  (Yes, SMTP is that
> basic.)

Right.

> You'd probably find you can send email from *any* email address
> you choose, provided that the email address domain permits that
> server to send emails from that domain.
> 
> (e.g. my domain has SPF records that only permit a small handful
> of servers to send emails with a 'longlandclan.id.au' domain.
> Anyone else will trigger a "soft-failure".)

SPF is only good if the receiving server does proper checks and you
don't have a soft fail in your setup.  Too many servers don't seem to
care about SPF failing, which is why back scatter is [or was] a much
greater problem that it should ever have been.

A.
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