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The spammers have found every list on our server in the last couple days and are sending a bunch of spam to them. It is filling up the spool with emails containing:

 Sorry, you do not have permission to post to the ######@#########.com mailing list.

 How do we turn off the no permission replies on the the lists in SM 4.3?

 I don't remember an option to turn it off...but how many is 'filling the spool up' exactly? Are they simply in the spool 'waiting to be delivered' or is it just backed up so far the spool cant keep up? Have you tried blacklisting some of their ip addresses?

There's a few hundred of them that get stuck in the spool each day all of a sudden. There are usually less than 20 emails in the spool. We're running a dual quad core Xeon HP DL380 G5 with 8 SAS drives, so it can easily keep up with them. I just don't like seeing over 90% of the email in spool being these responses that can't get delivered to these spammers. I also don't like the fact that they can simply spoof an anti-spam blackhole and make my server send email to it. The anti-spam filters we run easily remove these emails if they are sent to an email address that isn't one of our lists, but the server sends these no permission emails no matter what. A fix would be nice considering how long ago I first pointed this out.

http://www.smartertools.com/forums/p/12576/27102.aspx#27102

Still need a fix for this. It was supposed to be looked at a long time ago.

I spoke to ST on the phone about this years ago and was told it would be fixed. It was also acknowledged here on the forum a year and a half ago. What's the ETA on this?

I had a problem very similar to this last year.  Log into the administrator interface.  Go to Settings > General Settings > Security.  Make sure that "Allow Relay" is set to "Nobody."  Hope this helps!

 I think their problem is more of the backscatter spam caused when spammers try to send to the listserv address and the listserver replies 'you do not have permission' (something like that).back to the spoofed address the spammer used.

Thanks for trying to help, but it's already set to allow relay to Nobody and I know it's caused by spammers with addresses that don't work.

We also need the ability to turn off this response - apparently the bounces are getting sent to bogus "from" addresses which lead to the anti-spam honey pots and we are getting listed in the blackhole lists.

I need a fix ASAP to disable the reply from the list saying "You do not have permission to post to the <listname> list".

Thanks.  Doug

Although I do not believe that there is a proper way to turn the feature "off"; I have found a way to do it.  I found myself much in the same position as the rest of you... The backscatter was getting my email server graylisted by Yahoo almost constantly.  We probably have 1000+ hits against our "private" mailing list each day.  We use it for sending to about a hundred recipients at a time.  The spams would cause excessive amounts of:

 "You do not have permission to post to the <listname> list", as experienced by you fellows.

Here's what I did:

SmarterMail has the ability to call a command line program during mail processing. This is usually used for virus scanning.  However, it gives us a chance to kill these off before they leave the server.  In SmarterMail 5, the option is on the "Spool" page of General Settings.

I wrote a quick VBScript to look at the message and potentially kill it off.  I added logging and optional archiving, just so I could see what was happening.  Here's the source to the script:

'Filters SmarterMail Messages (Originally designed to squash list rejections)

Option Explicit

Main

Sub Main()

    Const ForReading = 1
    Const ForAppending = 8
    Const LogPath = "C:\Program Files\Special\SmarterMailFilterLog.txt"
    Const ArchivePath = "C:\Program Files\Special\BackScatter\"

    Dim FileName, objFSO, objTextFile, strText, ArchiveFileName

    FileName = WScript.Arguments(0)

    Set objFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
    If objFSO.FileExists(FileName) Then

        Set objTextFile = objFSO.OpenTextFile (FileName, ForReading)

        strText = objTextFile.ReadAll
        objTextFile.Close
        Set objTextFile = Nothing

        If instr(1, strText, "Sorry, you do not have permission") > 0 Then
        Set objTextFile = objFSO.OpenTextFile (LogPath, ForAppending, True)
            objTextFile.WriteLine(Now() & ", Deleted List Permission Bounce Email")
            objTextFile.Close
            Set objTextFile = Nothing

            If Len(ArchivePath) > 0 Then
                'Save a copy
                ArchiveFileName = Now() & ".txt"
                ArchiveFileName = Replace(ArchiveFileName, "/", "-")
                ArchiveFileName = Replace(ArchiveFileName, ":", "-")
                ArchiveFileName = ArchivePath & ArchiveFileName
          
                objFSO.CopyFile FileName, ArchiveFileName
            End If

            objFSO.DeleteFile FileName
    End If

    End If
    Set objFSO = Nothing

End Sub

To use it...

• Create the VBScript file
• Change the paths to something relevant for your computer
• Set SmarterMail to call it during processing.  Make sure to pass the filename.  My "Command Line Box" looks like this:
  C:\Program Files\Special\SmarterMailFilter.vbs %filepath

I have no connection to SmarterMail other than it's the mail server software that I'm using.  If you need help, you can reach me through my website, www.barnyardbbs.com.

The real solution to this problem is for SmarterMail to create a new option to suppress these emails.  However, this is a great interim solution to keep us all from getting in trouble with the graylists.

-Ben

Thank you very much. That's a great idea. After looking at your solution, it looks like I can also just add a filter in Declude to look at the subject and delete them if they have "You don not have permission to post" in them.

With an external filtering product, I suspect your idea would work.  Strangely, I've tried using SmarterMail's filtering system; but it doesn't seem to have any effect on these automatically generated notices.  I wouldn't have taken the "hard way" if they "easy way" would have worked originally.

 Best of luck with your filtering.

I wonder if, at a minimum, this functionality could be tied to the same options as Auto-Responders?

'Auto-Responder Exclusions' and 'Enable once per day per sender autoresponder restriction' could at least help with a backscatter problem like this.

There is an alternate method that allows this to work, using the 'Custom Headers' spam check.  This doesn't require a VB script to be called as an external progam.

1) Browse to 'Security' >> 'Anti-Spam Administration' and choose the 'Spam Checks' tab
2) Check the box to 'Enable for Outgoing Blocking' for 'Custom Headers'
3) Click 'Edit' for 'Custom Headers'
4) Add a custom header with the following details:
- Header: Subject
- Value: You do not have permission to post to
- Weight: 100
5) Browse to 'Security' >> 'Anti-Spam Administration' and choose the 'SMTP Blocking' tab
6) Check the box for 'Spam Blocking' under 'Outgoing Options'
7) Set the 'Weight Threshold' under 'Outgoing Options' to 100.

Repeat step 4 and use the subject 'Failed to post to the' as well, to also include password-protected lists.