-------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: cyrus pop3 question From: Jorey Bump <list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> To: Corey <corey_s@xxxxxxxxx> Date: Wednesday, April 16, 2008 4:18:58 PM You can rate limit new connections using iptables... http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/187Corey wrote, at 04/16/2008 04:29 PM:I just had an experience where my server was getting slammed with thousands of concurrent pop3 requests. This went on for over an hour before it finally ceased, at which point I was able to start cyrus again. Anyhow, what are some mechanisms to prevent this in the future?I've managed to stop such brute force password attacks by requiring encryption for all connections in imapd.conf: sasl_pwcheck_method: auxprop sasl_mech_list: PLAIN LOGIN CRAM-MD5 DIGEST-MD5 allowplaintext: no sasl_minimum_layer: 128 Your environment may be different and require some tweaking. Test thoroughly after making the changes. So far, I've only seen plaintext brute force attacks against POP3, so maybe it's a limitation of current malware. Nearly all modern clients can deal with this restriction, and it's good best practice. ---- Cyrus Home Page: http://cyrusimap.web.cmu.edu/ Cyrus Wiki/FAQ: http://cyrusimap.web.cmu.edu/twiki List Archives/Info: http://asg.web.cmu.edu/cyrus/mailing-list.html I imagine most normal connections are persistent with POP. Some IMAP clients may not be so nice, notably squirrelmail creates and tears down an IMAP connection for every user click. |
---- Cyrus Home Page: http://cyrusimap.web.cmu.edu/ Cyrus Wiki/FAQ: http://cyrusimap.web.cmu.edu/twiki List Archives/Info: http://asg.web.cmu.edu/cyrus/mailing-list.html