Hey Sean, thanks for the explanation. Useful for folks like me that don’t
know much about email DNS server configuration.

BTW, out of curiosity I ran a health and security check on the domain and
it says that the DKIM is not configured:

https://www.itechtics.com/tool/ed/?domain=Sudoroom.org

Wouldn’t this potentially marks our emails untrustworthy and be marked as
spam?

Just wondering.

Daniel



On Sun, Jan 12, 2025 at 8:29 PM Jake via sudo-sys <[email protected]>
wrote:

> wow thank you for explaining that!  I'm slowly learning more about email
> this
> way
>
> tonight I have to fix the Omni front door lock computer
>
> unless someone else wants to try
>
> -jake
>
>
> On Sun, 12 Jan 2025, Sean Greenslade via sudo-sys wrote:
>
> > On Sun, Jan 12, 2025 at 11:56:30AM -0800, Jake via sudo-sys wrote:
> >> can anyone understand what's going on here?  Are they trying to
> subscribe
> >> email addresses to [email protected] or something?
> >
> >> From a quick look at this, I don't think the sudoroom server is
> > compromised in any way. This looks like classic backscatter / joe job.
> >
> >> what do we do?
> >
> > Nothing, the error in on mail.code-works.de's server config. They
> > accepted a bogus message faking our return address, the receiver of this
> > spam refused it, then they sent a backscatter message telling us that
> > "our" message (the spammer's message) couldn't be delivered.
> >
> > More analysis below for the curious...
> >
> >> This is the mail system at host mail.code-works.de.
> >>
> >> I'm sorry to have to inform you that your message could not
> >> be delivered to one or more recipients. It's attached below.
> >
> > Here we see that this is a bounce message from the "mail.code-works.de"
> > mail server. Bounce messages are generally frowned upon these days in
> > mail admin circles for exactly this issue. Servers should never send
> > bounces to outside users, since they shouldn't accept undeliverable
> > messages from outside users.
> >
> >> For further assistance, please send mail to postmaster.
> >>
> >> If you do so, please include this problem report. You can
> >> delete your own text from the attached returned message.
> >>
> >>                    The mail system
> >>
> >> <[email protected]>: host 163mx01.mxmail.netease.com[103.129.252.43]
> said:
> >>     550 RP:ORQ 163 gzga-mx-mtada-g3-7,_____wDn99wIvINnsBgkAw--.14920S3
> >>     1736686604,please see
> >>
> http://mail.163.com/help/help_spam_16.htm?ip=88.198.193.230&hostid=gzga-mx-mtada-g3-7&time=1736686604
> >>     (in reply to RCPT TO command)
> >
> > Here we see that the spammer's message was being sent to 163.com's mail
> > servers. Those servers did not like the message and permanently rejected
> > it (550) for some sort of spam policy reason. The reason link they
> > provide 404s, so who knows exactly why they rejected it.
> >
> >> <[email protected]>: host 163mx01.mxmail.netease.com[103.129.252.43]
> said:
> >>     550 RP:ORQ 163 gzga-mx-mtada-g0-5,_____wDnHwsMvINnIfdVAw--.26571S2
> >>     1736686605,please see
> >>
> http://mail.163.com/help/help_spam_16.htm?ip=88.198.193.230&hostid=gzga-mx-mtada-g0-5&time=1736686605
> >>     (in reply to RCPT TO command)
> >>
> >> <[email protected]>: host 163mx03.mxmail.netease.com[103.129.252.43]
> said:
> >>     550 RP:ORQ 163 gzga-mx-mtada-g9-2,_____wDX_00OvINn_9gSAw--.59055S3
> >>     1736686608,please see
> >>
> http://mail.163.com/help/help_spam_16.htm?ip=88.198.193.230&hostid=gzga-mx-mtada-g9-2&time=1736686608
> >>     (in reply to RCPT TO command)
> >
> >> Reporting-MTA: dns; mail.code-works.de
> >> X-Postcow-Queue-ID: E1B287FDCC
> >> X-Postcow-Sender: rfc822; [email protected]
> >> Arrival-Date: Sun, 12 Jan 2025 11:01:08 +0100 (CET)
> >
> > And here we get a hint at the core problem. The presence of
> > "X-Postcow-*" headers suggests that this is a postcow "mail in a box"
> > server. See: https://docs.mailcow.email/
> >
> > I really don't like these sorts of turnkey magic email systems,
> > since administrating an email server correctly takes much more than a
> > $ curl | sh, which is _literally_ the start of the installation
> > instructions for that project.
> >
> >> Final-Recipient: rfc822; [email protected]
> >> Original-Recipient: rfc822;[email protected]
> >> Action: failed
> >> Status: 5.0.0
> >> Remote-MTA: dns; 163mx01.mxmail.netease.com
> >> Diagnostic-Code: smtp; 550 RP:ORQ 163
> >>     gzga-mx-mtada-g3-7,_____wDn99wIvINnsBgkAw--.14920S3
> 1736686604,please see
> >>
> http://mail.163.com/help/help_spam_16.htm?ip=88.198.193.230&hostid=gzga-mx-mtada-g3-7&time=1736686604
> >>
> >> Final-Recipient: rfc822; [email protected]
> >> Original-Recipient: rfc822;[email protected]
> >> Action: failed
> >> Status: 5.0.0
> >> Remote-MTA: dns; 163mx01.mxmail.netease.com
> >> Diagnostic-Code: smtp; 550 RP:ORQ 163
> >>     gzga-mx-mtada-g0-5,_____wDnHwsMvINnIfdVAw--.26571S2
> 1736686605,please see
> >>
> http://mail.163.com/help/help_spam_16.htm?ip=88.198.193.230&hostid=gzga-mx-mtada-g0-5&time=1736686605
> >>
> >> Final-Recipient: rfc822; [email protected]
> >> Original-Recipient: rfc822;[email protected]
> >> Action: failed
> >> Status: 5.0.0
> >> Remote-MTA: dns; 163mx03.mxmail.netease.com
> >> Diagnostic-Code: smtp; 550 RP:ORQ 163
> >>     gzga-mx-mtada-g9-2,_____wDX_00OvINn_9gSAw--.59055S3
> 1736686608,please see
> >>
> http://mail.163.com/help/help_spam_16.htm?ip=88.198.193.230&hostid=gzga-mx-mtada-g9-2&time=1736686608
> >
> >> Date: Sun, 12 Jan 2025 18:01:08 +0800
> >> From: LiDie <>
> >> Subject: JiangZhengQi
> >> To: JiangZhengQi <[email protected]>, TanGui <[email protected]>,
> >>  ChanYun <[email protected]>
> >
> > Pretty clear signs of spam from this message. Null sender in the "From"
> > header, unauthorized MailFrom ([email protected]), SPF softfail, no DKIM
> > signature. Absolutely no reason the mail.code-works.de server should
> > have accepted this message in the first place.
> >
> > As an extra precaution, I checked if our server had made any connections
> > to 163 or code-works.de:
> >
> >> zootboy@sudoroom:~$ zgrep 163mx /var/log/mail* | wc -l
> >> 0
> >
> >> zootboy@sudoroom:~$ zgrep code-works\.de /var/log/mail* | grep
> postfix\/smtp\\[ | wc -l
> >> 0
> >
> > In summary, no hack, also nothing we can really do about this short of
> > contacting code-works.de and asking them to fix their mail server.
> >
> > --Sean
> >
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> >
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