Date: October 20th 2007

Hello All

If you are not hosted on Epsilon, this e-mail does not pertain to you.

What is happening is that spammers scan the servers with programs containing easy username/password pairs (such as test/12345 or info/abc123 etc). On a server with hundreds of domains and thousands of mailboxes it is easy to get a hit once in a while on a combination and once in, the spammer can spam from that mail account. This is not a new tactic but since most hosts clamped down on the formmail issue the spammers are having to use other means of which this is now the most popular.

This is not specific to your domain or e-mails but this e-mail is going out to all WebMaine.Net customers hosted on the Linux server, Epsilon.

We can stop this exploitation dead in its tracks but it's going to require a very small amount of co-operation from you..

Until now you have been able to login to your mail accounts and webmail via the username only. What we need to do is tighten security and make each user login to mail accounts and webmail via the username AND domain name. Example:

BEFORE:

Login: <user>

Pass: <password>

AFTER:

Login: <user@yourdomain.com>;

Pass: <password>

So as you can see your login name will change from "user" to "user@yourdomain.com";.

Some of you are going to say, "But hey, I already use the full username and domain to login!". Yes, you are not wrong. Until now the servers have supported both ways of logging in but after this change it will ONLY support the full login name. With this implemented the spammers programs will be rendered useless and our servers will be free from annoying issues such as being listed on RBLs (Registered Black List Service) making email bounce for some users.

We will make this change next week on Monday night @ 0400 HRS so that should give everyone enough time to make this simple change in mail client settings.

If you come in on Tuesday morning and you are getting an error getting your mail, this is why! Simply change your username to be [ user ]@ yourdomain.com and all will be fine..

For those of you who have multiple employees, please spread the word that this is happening so they too can make the needed changes.



That is all.

Lee Harvey, SysAdmin
WebMaine.Net