Am 03.02.2025 um 04:41:00 Uhr schrieb Doug via mailop:

> It's backscatter from a phishing campaign. At first, I tried to
> contact the server owner through their abuse@ account. They have us
> blocked for ... "sending spam". (is this characteristic? do
> blocklists not do SPF verification? can someone just send a bunch of
> emails with forged return paths and from addresses to get them added
> to a blocklist? seems very easy to abuse)

There are several blacklists that have their own listing criteria and
admins can create their own rulesets.

> What is The Way™, if any, to deal with backscatter? It doesn't seem
> like there is a turnkey BATV solution for Postfix. I was considering
> writing a Milter to do it, but I have no idea if it's even worth
> trying.

Just found this:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/batv-milter/

> I did end up adding the backscatterer RBL, which at least sends these 
> emails to spam. It does remind me of why I don't really like
> UCEPROTECT blocklists, though - they're very adamant about having my
> server on the list because it's in a "bad neighborhood",

Level 2/3 intentionally does this and anyone who uses that to
permanently block mail wants to block legitimate mail too.

> but this ISP sending thousands of emails (that could have been
> prevented at this point by just recognizing that a single email
> account on their service is generating thousands of bounces) is
> considered clean. Maybe I misunderstand the purpose of the RBL and my
> bias against UCEPROTECT is influencing me here.

They don't list backscatter abuse in level 1, they have their own list
for that.

> Finally, these backscatter emails seem like something else that can
> be abused.

It is and that is why the only reasonable way to block mail is to
reject it during the SMTP session.
Although, several (commercial) products exists that don't handle it
that way.

> If someone forges the return path for an email, but has
> access to it in some way, they can use it to find out which emails
> don't exist.

They can do that with immediately rejected mail too - they directly get
the info that the inbox doesn't exist in the SMTP session.

-- 
Gruß
Marco

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