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Apologies if this is the wrong section (May be better in serverfault?)

Recently in doing a check of the logs I've found our system was for the last several days constantly attempting to mail somebody. Below is a copy of the mail log excerpt

May 4 17:14:51 li240-237 sm-mta[22961]: p3UN9oiX011581: to=<REDACTED@REDACTED.com>, delay=3+18:05:01, xdelay=00:00:01, mailer=esmtp, pri=48812230, relay=mx3.REDACTED*.com. [REDACTED], dsn=4.0.0, stat=Deferred: Connection refused by mx3.REDACTED*.com.

Does anyone have any ideas why so many attempts have been made and if I can track where these attempts are coming from? We do have a php based form which sends out an email to people upon confirmation of the submission and utilizes swiftMailer. Could this be constantly attempting to send the email for some reason?

My account has not been compromised and is the only one on the server aside from the root. The only other thought is someone attempting to send emails via our servers port 25...

Any ideas?

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    I think this question might be more appropriate for serverfault. That being said, the log excerpt doesn't describe the origin of the message. Check further up in the log. I usually cross-reference the message id (p3UN9oiX011581 in your example) to see where it came from. Once you know where the email started, you can continue troubleshooting from there.
    – Mike B
    May 4, 2011 at 17:47
  • Is the message ID the same in every single case or are there different message IDs? That will tell you if it's trying to send one email over and over, or a lot of different emails.
    – DerfK
    May 4, 2011 at 18:32
  • If you're using sendmail, you can see how many deferred message you have by typing mailq (or sendmail -bp).
    – Mike B
    May 4, 2011 at 18:47

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Mail Transfer Agents (MTAs) typically retry sending mail if the recipient's mail-server is unavailable. Usually they keep trying for several days. So this can occur if a user or program on your LAN genuinely sent a single email to someone whose mail-server is unavailable.

If you have a web-page that allows people to send e-mail, these are typically attacked by spammers to use a relays for their spam. It is easier for them to get your computer to send out millions of spam messages than to buy their own computers, plus if your ISP disconnects you for spamming, the spammer has plenty of other victims whose computers they can use. So ensure your PHP scripts sanitize all input. It is best to use scripts that have been explicitly developed with security in mind.

Also check that your MTA is configured to block relaying.

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