Relay Problems......stupid spam!

[jguy]

Greetings. I have tried over and over and over to keep our email server from being used as an OPEN RELAY. Spammers use our server as a relay point. We have received word from ORBS that our server is a spammer. Anyway, I have tried the MICROSOFT way of blocking relaying by choosing the "routing" tab on the IMC, choosing the "reroute incoming SMTP mail (required for POP3/IMAP4)" option, setting up domain.com as "inbound", and clicking the "routing restrictions" command button and choosing "hosts and clients with these ip addresses" check box (there is no entry in here---M$ recommended). Anyway, I restarted IMC over and over and over and still fail the ORBS relay test. What the heck is going on?! I read somewhere that there were some registry edits, but don't remember. Let me give you a little background on my set up to help with diagnosis. We have a firewall server w/ public ip and private ip(192.168.0.2) (two nics). Behind that we have the mail server with another private IP (192.168.0.1) Can someone help me?? Joe W. Guy
Network Admin
MIS Director

 

[Zelandakh]

Suggest you turn OFF the reroute. This will stop you being used as a router. Most Exch servers do not need to be routers.

Why do you think it should be on?

 

[jguy]

Cause I can't get mail otherwise.

Joe W. Guy
Network Admin
MIS Director

 

[nolapeck]

Let me give you a little background on my set up to help with diagnosis....

What version of Exchange? Service Packs.

Patrick

 

[Zelandakh]

Have you tried turning off the Exchange rerouting? I don't see why it would stop your email working.

 

[jguy]

Exchange rerouting turned off doesn't work. I can still send mail when it's off, but can't receive it. There is a "relaying denied" return message to the sender when it's off (relaying).

I have Exchange 5.5 SP4 installed.

Here's a simple diagram of what I have.

<ISP MX Records DNS>virtual domain

http://www.company.com

|
|
<firewall>192.0.0.2 nic and 209.16.245.179 public nic
-
|-----------------<mail server>192.0.0.1 domain.com
|
<private net>192.0.0.0;255.255.255.0 Joe W. Guy
Network Admin
MIS Director

 

[Zelandakh]

Is the MS SMTP service running on your Exchange server?

 

[jguy]

yes Joe W. Guy
Network Admin
MIS Director

 

[Stevos]

Hello. Just joined. Following your conversation. From what I've learnt, telling exchange to not reroute is actually less secure than telling it to reroute incoming mail, and specifying the restrictions - specifying no IP addresses under &quot;hosts and clients with these IP addresses&quot;.

I did this to our server about a month ago and it seemed to fix the problem - at least with MAPS (

http://www.mail-abuse.org).

Have you checked if you are registered on MAPS. Maybe ORBS is getting it from there?

Hope this helps...

Regards,
Stevos