CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

Hi guys,

Finally got an answer to the problems I have been having with our host and remote SMTP server. Here's what they said:

Hi Matt,

      You're right, we had to apply restrictions on what's allowed to go
    outside of the server in regards to the mails.
      The applied rules prevent any script on the server to bypass our
    local MTA to prevent the mass mailing of the server through the
    insecure php/cgi scripts.

      Basically it prevents a script bypassing the local Exim MTA and
    "going direct to MX", which is an old school tactic of spammers.
      "Direct to MX" spamming is where you find out the MX record(s) for
    the target domain(s) by querying DNS and deliver mail directly to
    that domain's mail exchangers, rather than using the local Exim MTA.
    Spammers do this so they won't leave any logs in your Exim mail
    server that can be used to track their actions.

      The connections on port 25 are blocked unless the sending GID
    matches mail / mailman / root.
      To send emails to your server, you'll need to use SMTP
    authentication in your script to authenticate locally on the server
    and deliver the messages to your Mac Server.

      As the result you'll get the scheme like this:
      ==
      1) Authenticate on business.midphase.com
      2) Send an email to an address on Mac server at 7XXXXXXXXXX
      3) Mac Server recognizes mails delivered to one of its local
    mailboxes as the ones to be distributed (MailMan software would do
    it for you)
      ==

      Unfortunately, we can't disable these security settings due to the
    attempts to guess FTP passwords for the users on the server (for ex.
    if a user uses "test123" as the password for FTP) and then use it to
    upload/execute/remove CGI scripts that'd bypass the server MTA by
    connecting to the remote hosts on port 25 directly and thus, causing
    the blacklisting for the server IP since we're considered as the
    source of spam correspondence.

Question is - can I force CiviCRM to authenticate BEFORE sending the mail out like the email suggests?