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annotate docs/masqmail-security.txt @ 389:f94b01639e2a

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added acknowledgments
author meillo@marmaro.de
date Fri, 06 Feb 2009 15:59:33 +0100
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1 masqmail security
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2 =================
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4 masqmail is not intended to listen on a port open to the internet. Its normal
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5 operation is on workstations and listening only on localhost.
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6 Generally masqmail should only listen on a port accessable by only trusted
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7 users. Therefor a firewall should be set up to protect against attacks.
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9 Security is not a primary goal of masqmail, because its jobs is normally not in
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10 dangerous areas. But secrurity should always be a secondary goal, especially for
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11 everything that communicates with/via the internet. (And also for programs that
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12 run suid-root, like all mail transfer agents.)
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14 masqmail should be hardened in future! A common and good way to do that is to
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15 split it up in several programs, each doing one particular job with only the
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16 needed rights. This approach is taken by qmail for example.
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17 postfix took qmail as inspiration and is nearly as secure as it---in contrast to
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18 sendmail which implements a monolitic architecture.
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19 But monolitic architectures must not be bad in general. exim for example shows
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20 that a monolitic MTA can be secure---if it one cared about it.