[Info-vax] Decuserve.org - Anyone know why it's down?

[Bill Gunshannon]

In article <m8f155$17qh$2 at news.kjsl.com>,
	helbig at asclothestro.multivax.de (Phillip Helbig (undress to reply)) writes:
> In article <m8eii9$q75$1 at dont-email.me>, Stephen Hoffman
> <seaohveh at hoffmanlabs.invalid> writes: 
> 
>> >> I hope that's going to change as it will definitely affect who the 
>> >> users can send email to.
>> > 
>> > Why do you say that?
>> 
>> Because that's the way that some common spam filtering works with 
>> SpamAssassin and various other tools.  If the forward and reverse DNS 
>> translations for the peer mail server don't match, then the local box --- 
>> not the mail server with the bad DNS --- can consider the remote box --- 
>> the mail server with the mismatched DNS --- to be a spam engine, and drop 
>> the messages.
> 
> From which I conclude that no email I have sent goes through such 
> SpamAssassin stuff.

I thought you said you send your outbound email through a proper MTA
(relay agent).  If so, unless they were idiots (are you listening 7th
Signal?) they would have the A Record and the PTR Record in their DNS
matched and all is well.  The example of decuserve.org is one that is
not set up properly.  When (If?) it comes back up and the mapping stays
the same someone is free to let me know when they are going to try and
we can see what happens when they send email here.

But people should realize, places that accept email from sites who's
A Record and PTR Record do not match are mis-configured.  Period.  The
RFC's explaion everything you should be doing.  And NIST has published
numerous white-papers on stuff like this as well.  So has DISA and most
likely the NSA as well.  The next time you want to bitch about Unix or
Windows security, start by pointing your finger at the administrator.
Come to think about it, I wonder how many VMS MTA's are also badly
configured. Too bad DISA stopped maintaining the VMS SRR Checklist.

bill
 

-- 
Bill Gunshannon          |  de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n.  Three wolves
billg999 at cs.scranton.edu |  and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
University of Scranton   |
Scranton, Pennsylvania   |         #include <std.disclaimer.h>