From nanog-bounces+bonomi=mail.r-bonomi.com@nanog.org Fri Feb 19 22:32:48 2010 From: William Herrin <bill@herrin.us> Date: Fri, 19 Feb 2010 23:32:10 -0500 Subject: Re: Spamhaus... To: Larry Sheldon <LarrySheldon@cox.net> Cc: nanog@nanog.org
On Fri, Feb 19, 2010 at 8:35 PM, Larry Sheldon <LarrySheldon@cox.net> wrote:
On 2/19/2010 7:20 PM, William Herrin wrote:
"If an SMTP server has accepted the task of relaying the mail and later finds that the destination is incorrect or that the mail cannot be delivered for some other reason, then it MUST construct an "undeliverable mail" notification message and send it to the originator of the undeliverable mail (as indicated by the reverse-path)."
Does the RFC say what to do if the reverse-path has been damaged and now points to somebody who had nothing what ever to do with the email?
Hi Larry,
Re-reading the paragraph I quoted and you repeated, I'm going to say that the answer is "yes."
I'll bite. *HOW* do you send to the _originator_ (as *required* by the RFC you quoted) of the undeliverable mail, when the reverse path points to 'someone else'? Note well the exact lanugage used -- it does not say 'the party named in the reverse path', the 'claimed sender', 'putative sender' or any other similar equivocation that justifies sending to a forged address. It says "the originator". To me, that can be only iterpreted in _one_ way. To wit: as the party that _actually_ created and transmitted the message, _regardless_ of what the declared return path is. Since such a message is 'defective' (not RFC-compliant -- because the true point -of-origin is *NOT* in the reverse path, as it MUST be for an RFC-compliant message) on it's face, I will argue that there is no need to apply the 'required' handling for a 'proper' message to it.