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  • From: John Reuning <john AT metalab.unc.edu>
  • To: ibiblio-announce AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [ibiblio-announce] Followup on recent web site & mail problems
  • Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2004 09:05:45 -0400

Many of you noticed and reported both web site and email problems during
the past week. Both services have been less than optimal. However, we
think we've resolved all of the issues, and things are back to normal
(i.e. slow but not completely offline). Here are the details.

Web problems:

A site we host had a page with some javascript code that caused certain
browsers to flood us with connection requests. The volume of requests
overwhelmed the web cluster load balancers, resulting in DOS
conditions. The javascript has been modified, and the floods seem to
have subsided. However, there may still be brief floods until all of
the browsers renew their caches and get the fixed page.

Mail problems:

As best we can tell, the mail delivery problems were another DOS-like
event. We provide TLS (SSL) on the mail server to allow encrypted
authenticated mail relaying for ibiblio contributors. TLS is open to
all, and spammers have recently begun initiating TLS sessions for
sending us spam. The problem on our mail server occurs when a spam mail
client, after having its mail rejected, severs the smtp connection
without properly ending the TLS session. This leaves the sessions open
indefinitely on our mail server.

We're still investigating whether this can be fixed in the MTA
software. In the meantime, we've instituted a workaround by removing
TLS on the main smtp port (25) and enabling smtps (port 465) with TLS.
Unless spammers start connecting to the smtps port, the improperly
terminated TLS sessions should stop.

Thank you for your patience while we sorted through these issues. And
thanks to the other folks here for their efforts in fixing broken
software.

Thanks,

-jrr



  • [ibiblio-announce] Followup on recent web site & mail problems, John Reuning, 09/17/2004

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