ietf-nntp Re: POST vs IHAVE

[Ade Lovett]

Rich Salz writes:
>
>Here is another way of distinguishing between IHAVE and POST.
>
>If the article is "bad" in any way (no Approved for moderated, unparseable
>headers, etc) then:
>	If submitted via IHAVE:  toss it, log it.
>	If submitted via POST:  try to return to sender.

Careful about the 'trying to return to sender' bit.  I've seen a couple
of denial-of-service attack attempts on systems that try to return
bad articles via mail, rather than a 441 post fail response code.

Consider the following scenario:

	open_socket( "nntp.isp.com", "nntp" );
	while (1) {
		write_socket( "post" );
		write_socket( "from: victim at victims.dom.ain" );
		write_socket( "." );
	}

Any 'return to sender' via non 441-response-code methods really do
need to be tagged with a 'MAY' .. there's too many bad guys out
there these days :(

-aDe

-- 
Ade Lovett, Demon Internet Ltd.