Date: Fri, 6 Jan 2006 11:14:17 +0000 From: Alan Smithee <smitheebsd@googlemail.com> To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Subject: Mail originating from FreeBSD servers spam-blocked by large organization Message-ID: <dce310d30601060314x5c5a8c90p@mail.gmail.com>
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Hi, A friend works for a large organization, and a number of recent emails to them from me were not received - and did not generate any sort of bounce message. After confirming successful delivery of these to their servers in my logs and eliminating things such as mistaken inclusion of my server IP i= n one of the black hole lists, we followed up with their administrators and were told that a mail filter rule was in place to block and hold all incoming email with the string 'freebsd' in the headers. Naturally, this was rather disturbing, so we responded with an explanation of how what FreeBSD was, how it is commonly used for legitimate email servers by ISPs and companies, and how it is a relatively unlikely source for email spam compared to (say) Windows. To this we received a response indicating that the security department of this organization had requested this block, and that they felt that it should remain in place for the time being. The security department is responsible for protecting from everything from standard worms and trojans to professional malicious attacks, and it is har= d to tell where on this scale their reasoning is for blocking email originating from FreeBSD servers. It is highly unlikely that they would discuss any specific reasons. Naturally, I think this is a rather draconian defense, of limited practical use. Please forgive the lack of detail about the organization in question, and my use of a pseudonym for this email - the organization has some very good reasons for being extremely careful about its security and would take = a dim view of having any of its measures discussed in public, even if they ar= e dumb ones. Does anyone have any advice? In particular, I would be keen to obtain any statistics or references for organizations that use FreeBSD to host their email servers. Thanks, An anonymous FreeBSD advocate (if that's not a contradiction in terms)
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