> Though  I  would  be  confident  that  with  custom  code,  you  could
> *eventually* get saslauthd and/or pam to talk to a SQL Server DB using
> IMail's  DDL, I don't know of anyone doing that now.

Why would you use IMail's DLL from another box running something like QMail,
sendmail, etc. if you could just use native ODBC access or JDBC to access
either the actual SQL server or, if performance required, a local replicated
copy to MySQL?

> > (it'd probably be more secure than IMail anyway :)
>
> I don't quite get this. If you're pushing the DB in the clear, even if
> you  expect  the  gateway  to  hash  it  after  it's  processed (using
> saslpasswd  or  similar), anyone who compromises the box would be able
> to  intercept the plain-text upload. Or are you suggesting hashing the
> passwords  with the gateway's algorithm before uploading them? This is
> reasonable, but hey, you can encrypt passwords with IMail, too, if you
> want.

Who said anything about pushing passwords in clear-text?  Why would anyone do
that?  :)

Options:

1) Gateway connects to external SQL over secure LAN or tunnelled SSH / SSL
traffic.
2) SQL DB is securely replicated to gateway (again secure)
3) IMail DB export ships a pre-hashed or encrypted file to gateway via
SSH/SCP.

Simply by allowing secure auth at the gateway (instead of your internal mail
server) provides a few benefits.  Linux default pw hashes are more secure than
IMail's default pw cipher (it's not really encrypted, right?).  Lockouts at
the gateway won't necessarily disable an internal user's access to the email
system.  DoS or brute force attacks will be isolated at the gateway, never
hitting the internal server.  It's been my experience that I'd have better
luck attacking admin level access to NT than root to a linux box.

No matter... different alternatives on either side.

So what's this you speak of improving IMail's pw handling?  I think I saw
someone trying to do this, but they had troubles, what's the correct way to do
it?

-ives


To Unsubscribe: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/mailing-lists.html
List Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/imail_forum%40list.ipswitch.com/
Knowledge Base/FAQ: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/IMail/

Reply via email to