Plesk Mail Authentication

[adrianodalpra]

Hi,

My server only allows authenticated SMTP users to send e-mail on mail server (MailEnable Enterprise 2.0) without granting relay any IP address.

This was necessary to block users from send unauthenticated mails so spammers cant exploit my server.

But in this situation, Plesk cant sent admin notifications to users because it cant authenticate on mail server.

Anyone knows how to allow Plesk 7.6.1 to authenticate on mail server before trying to send an e-mail? I did not find anything on configuration.

Thanks for help,

Adriano.

 

[amarce]

Hi Adriano,

Maybe you can grant relay permissions to th loopback IP address (127.0.0.1) and your server's public IP adrress to solve that?

Regards,

Arnau Marcé
www.silicontower.net

 

[adrianodalpra]

Hi amarce,

Thanks for the reply.

If I grant relay to 127.0.0.1 or my public address any user´s script running on server is allowed to send e-mails without authentication also and I want to prevent this.

 

[amarce]

Yes, but your customers can send emails from their websites using their usernames and passwords.

I think that they can do a script that uses username and password.

Regards,

Arnau Marcé
www.silicontower.net

 

[adrianodalpra]

Yes, they can. But I can track their messages if authenticated because I know the user and password used to send the message.

If they are not authenticated I never know from which domain the message is coming, so will be harder to find the sender.

 

[amarce]

O.K.

So, in that case, i think that it cannot be done.

But, anyway, postmaster messages in all mail servers should be allways delivered (Even if you specified anything else) because it don't need to authenticate (The only problem is if you have manually forbiden the message sending from the address of postmaster).

Regards,

Arnau Marcé
www.silicontower.net

 

[adrianodalpra]

Arnau,

As there is no way to allow Plesk to authenticate prior to send e-mails I will leave relay open for loopback address..

Thanks for your help.

Adriano.

 

[amarce]

Hi Adriano,

We have our loopbacks open in our web/mail servers.

In our "contract" (I don't know if the word is correct) and conditions that the customers are complaining when they are buying any of our products, there is a part that specifies that customers cannot spam with our servers. This, usually, makes the customers to respect you a bit.

Anyway, if any of your servers is using to send spam, it will become slower and will take a lot of traffic. Also you can notice that it has a lot of connections to another servers' port 25 issuing a netstat command.

We are also using this settings, because we had our support mailboxes full of emails asking for how to send messages from an php or asp form because they had seen scripts on internet and they where not working. (Other customers where asking about which mail user and password should they use because they thing that a user or password can only send from the address that is created )

Regards,

Arnau Marcé
www.silicontower.net

 

[adrianodalpra]

Hi Arnau,

Well, I think you are right. A lot of customers will be raising support tickets about scripts not working.

I also have a contract clause where users cant use server to send spams, but we need to find who is exploiting the server...

Thanks again.

Adriano.

 

[adrianodalpra]

I was thinking on another solution.

I do not allow relay for 127.0.0.1, but use another private IP address on your server.

Since the IP address does not need to be routable, I could pick a 192.168.xxx.xxx address; I would then need to configure plesk to use that interface to send its messages out (rather than 127.0.0.1).

Since my users will not know that IP address, and the address is non-routable, it will mean that no-one else should use it to relay.

So, anyone knows how can I bind Plesk only to another private IP address to send e-mails?

Thanks again.

 

[adrianodalpra]

Any solution about my problem?