Re: Mails not receiving through web based forms

Question asked by Hemen Shah - 7/4/2015 at 5:13 AM

Unanswered

Hi,

1) Recently upgraded SM 14.x Pro to Entp

2) Post this upgrade have stopped receiving mails through web based forms

3) Tested by adding smtp ip to whitelist and it works fine but would not prefer adding to white list.

4) What can be wrong here ? is there anything to do with PROF to ENTP version update ?

5) Lic is reactivated but have not rebooted the server as not needed i guess.

Pls advice.

Cheers.

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Bruce Barnes Replied

7/4/2015 at 8:22 AM

You need to modify your web based code to use SMTP authentication, using an account on your SmarterMail server, to send these messages now. This is easily accomplished with CDOSYS (remembering that CDONTS was depreciated several years ago)

As you stated, whitelisting is a solution but is not a good solution as anything that originates on that IP address will be allowed through the MX server.

I worked on a case with a village in a European city (which shall remain unnamed to protect the poor Village manager who caused the problem in the first place), three years ago, when a web server IP address which had been compromised was whitelisted. They had a sales tool on the server, but it was not compromised.

The Village manager's daughter had her beauty shop website, which was written in PHP, running on the township's server (illegally), and someone had hacked her site. The hacked PHP code was sending out more than 100,000 spam messages per hour through SmarterMail, on a whitelisted IP address.

I worked on that issue for more than a day, finally, and against the wishes of the Village manager, shutting down IIS (he had steadfastly refused to allow me to do so for the first 23 hours). When I shut down IIS, all of the rough messages stopped.

I then restarted IIS, and disabled all the sites, enabling them, one at a time, until we found the corrupted site. Had he allowed me to disable the IIS - to check for compromise, in the beginning, we would have saved countless hours and they Village would have saved almost $2,000.

To see an example of an SMTP authenticated form, using CDONTS, see https://www.chicagonettech.com/contact.asp, which uses CDONTS and SMTP authentication, under ASP, and also has a numeric CAPTCHA included that's a whole lot easier to use than the image based CAPTCHA used on most forms.

If you need some sample code, feel free to contact me off-list.

- Bruce.

Bruce Barnes ChicagoNetTech Inc brucecnt@comcast.net Phonr: (773) 491-9019 Phone: (224) 444-0169 E-Mail and DNS Security Specialist Network Security Specialist Customer Service Portal: https://portal.chicagonettech.com Website: https://www.ChicagoNetTech.com Security Blog: http://networkbastion.blogspot.com/ Web and E-Mail Hosting, E-Mail Security and Consulting

Hemen Shah Replied

7/4/2015 at 11:57 AM

Hi Bruce,

Thanks for your response,
but i am using authentication as well then too i am not receiving, this change has happened just after i upgraded my lic to enterprise and reactivated the lic.

Thanks

Bruce Barnes Replied

7/4/2015 at 1:03 PM

When you upgraded from your prior version, did you:

uninstall the old version
reboot - to unlock any locked files
install the new version

Hemen Shah Replied

7/4/2015 at 1:53 PM

Hi,
Yes i did that as per normal process, again to say it just happened after i migrated my lic to enterprise during flash sale few days ago

Curtis Kropar www.HawaiianHope.org Replied

7/7/2015 at 4:29 PM

Bruce, Not to steal the thread, but we are having a similar problem. I just set up the SMTP, and then was reading another article that says if you have anything else that is using port 25, it (one of them) may not work. So with CDOsys, can it be on the same server as as smartermail ? Our test mails are stuck in que.

This is the article I followed

http://www.vsysad.com/2012/04/setup-and-configure-smtp-server-on-windows-server-2008-r2/

www.HawaiianHope.org - Providing technology services to non profit organizations, low income families, homeless shelters, clean and sober houses and prisoner reentry programs. Since 2015, We have refurbished over 11,000 Computers !

Bruce Barnes Replied

7/8/2015 at 1:56 AM

Usr only the SmarterMail server and CDOSys. .uninstall the Microsoft SMTP srrver completely, it's not required, and cannot be secured with enforced SMTP authentication. Using Microsoft 's SMTP may also contribute to non-delivery issues, because DomainKey, DKIM,and SPF headers for the domain will not be properly added to the headers of messages sent from the Microsoft SMTP server. SUMMARY : Use only SmarterMail and use CDOSYS within all webforms - sending via a valid e-mail account in the domain name associated with the web form to properly authentic all outbound e-mail and properly insert "authenticated as", "sent from", "reply to", "DomainKey", "DKIM", and "SPF" records into the outbound messages. Failure to properly authentic will result in non-delivery by YAHOO!, GMAIL, OUTLOOK.COM (which now handles all Hotmail and other formerly independent Microsoft mail services), Comcast, AOL, and about 8 other large ISPs. Non-authenticated e-mail will also be blocked by anyobe else requiring DMARC.

Curtis Kropar www.HawaiianHope.org Replied

7/8/2015 at 4:08 AM

Bruce, I read what you wrote like 9 times. You tell why, but dont give the how. Your statement of uninstalling MS seems to conflict with other stuff i have read that says SMTP server is required to get CDOSYS to work.

I am not doubting your expertise and that you have it working on your server, but i am new to server admin and lost. Half of what i am reading on the net conflicts with the other half and there are way too many people taking wild assed guesses and calling them answers and responses. Most of which lead me in a direction that does not solve problems and just wastes time. Are you willing to take a look at this directly ?

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