Rate limiting - help!!

[chrism1979]

I need some help. Basically my server is being used to relay spam. My server admin guy responded by "rate limiting the incoming SMTP connections" to 4 per minute. He said this was low enough that the spammers would soon get bored and move to another box.

Unfortunately it also seems to have prevented the server from forwarding my own e-mail to my gmail account. I get all my e-mail to [email protected] forwarded to [email protected]. Since he made the change, all my e-mail has stopped being forwarded.

Unfortunately he's also disappeared. He said he was stepping away to feed his kid, and that was 24hrs ago.

I need to sort out the spam problem, but in the short term I really need my e-mails. Can someone tell me how to undo the rate limiting?

I'm guessing there's a one line command I need - but I've scoured google for hours and cannot find help.

It's a Centos system. I'm not sure what mail system or even how to find out.

All help really appreciated. Thanks in advance!

Chris

 

[tillo]

Does this server use DirectAdmin as control panel? If the answer is yes, then your mail system is exim. But I doubt it, since the DirectAdmin default exim config does a good job preventing open relay.

Anyway your system administrator doesn't really know what he is doing if he really limited the SMTP connection rate to avoid open relay... it won't help a bit. Spammers don't care.

And to remove his setting we would have to know how he implemented it: he may have used iptables, or some exim rule... we need to know exactly what he has done or, instead, we need access to your server. Usually this also means that you have to hire and pay us (which also brings some kind of guarantee for your data's security).

 

[nobaloney]

Just a reminder: if you're running DirectAdmin and your sites use SpamBlocker built into the exim.conf file, you can still create an open relay by putting into the whitelist_domains file the name of any domain hosting email on the server.

And...

It's possible of course that gmail is blocking Chris not because of the rate-limiting, but also because his IP# is now on a spam blocklist used by gmail, or because they've gotten complaints about email sent from his server. In fact I'd think this was more likely.

And...

Chris... a quick check shows that mydomain.com isn't on any blocklists, but I doubt that's your domain name. Read this for more information.

Jeff

 

[floyd]

Real answers require real domains.
Fake domains will get you fake answers.