Sendmail & NDR's

[Scotta98]

Hello All,

I have a question about using sendmail 8.13.5. Our primary mail server is an exchange 2003 server (mail1.mydomain.com MX Priority 10) and our backup server is a *nix with sendmail (mail2.mydomain.com MX Priority 50). The idea is to have a simple process in place should the exchange sever go down or loose a connection to the internet.

So, mail is delivered as normal to the exchange server. If it did go down or be offline, mail would then be sent to sendmail and it would sit in a catch all directory until it was popped and processed. Individuals within the company could pop it or I can pop it via modem if I have to directly into exchange through a third party mail connector.

With all that said, now to the problem. SPAMMERS! They now send to my sendmail server directly trying to bypass my excahnge spam control. Everything works perfectly with one exception. Sendmail keeps sending an NDR and most of the time, the return address is spoofed. In effect, the NDR's are also spam.

So the question is, is it acceptable to turn off NDR's completely in sendmail. Is having an NDR generated a requirment? I have not got the time to be looking up IP's of senders, etc. I just want to stop the NDR's from being sent and if it is acceptable, how can I do this?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Spirit]

Its now standard practice for a lot of Admins to stop NDR's to the internet for exactly this reason and the fact that they NDR's can clog your queues.

I think this is a political decision rather than tech.

Its Features v's Security.

Iain