Provided by: greylistd_0.9.0.2+nmu1_all bug

NAME

       greylistd - simple greylisting system for mail transport agents

SYNOPSIS

       greylistd

DESCRIPTION

   Greylisting
       This  daemon provides a simple greylisting implementation for use with Exim and other mail
       transport agents (MTAs).  For a more elaborate introduction to greylisting,  please  refer
       to Evan Harris' whitepaper at:      http://projects.puremagic.com/greylisting/

       Greylisting  is  a  simple  but highly effective means to weed out messages that are being
       delivered  via  spamware/ratware  tools.   The  idea  is  to  establish  whether  a  prior
       relationship exists between the sender and the receiver of a message.  Most of the time it
       does, and the delivery proceeds normally.

       On the other hand, if no prior relationship exists, the delivery is temporarily  rejected,
       using  a  451  SMTP  response.   Legitimate MTAs will treat this response accordingly, and
       retry the delivery in a while.  In contrast,  ratware  will  usually  fail  to  retry  the
       delivery in a normal fashion.

       As  a  result,  greylisting is currently more than 90% effective in blocking incoming junk
       mail, while nearly all legitimate mail goes through.

       Three pieces of information (herafter called a triplet)  from  the  delivery  attempt  are
       cached for future reference:

         - The address of the host attempting the delivery
         - The envelope sender address (MAIL FROM:)
         - The envelope recipient address (RCPT TO:)

       If  a delivery attempt was temporarily rejected, then after an initial timeout (60 minutes
       by default), but before a retry  expiration  time  (8  hours  by  default),  new  delivery
       attempts  with  the  same  triplet  are accepted, and the triplet is added to a whitelist.
       This allows for delivery retries, presumably from legitimate MTAs, and ensures that future
       mail from the same contact is not subject to greylisting.

       If  a whitelisted triplet has not been seen for an extended duration (by default 60 days),
       it is expired.  This prevents unlimited growth of the list.

       The downside to greylisting is that legitimate mail from people who have  never  sent  you
       mail in the past (or, at least, within the last 60 days) are subject to a one-hour delay.

       The  upside  is  that  the current generation of ratware tools will not be able to deliver
       spam or virii to you.  Even if, as a result of lots of sites incorporating the greylisting
       concept, ratware tools are modified such that temporarily rejected deliveries are retried,
       you stand an increased chance of blocking such mail.  That is because within the mandatory
       1-hour  initial  delay,  chances are that the sending host's IP address has been listed in
       one or more DNS block lists (such as bl.spamcop.net, cbl.abuseat.org, etc..), and  can  be
       rejected  by  your  MTA by consulting these lists directly, or via anti-spam software like
       SpamAssassin.

   greylistd
       greylistd is meant to be installed on a server that accepts incoming  mail.   The  MTA  on
       this  server  connects  to  the  greylistd  daemon  over  a UNIX domain socket (by default
       /var/run/greylistd/socket), or alternatively via the command greylist(1),  and  submits  a
       string   (triplet)   that  identifies  a  particular  host/sender/recipient  relationship.
       greylistd responds "white", "grey" or "black", depending on the current listing status  of
       the  provided  triplet.  Alternatively, if either of the "--white", "--grey", or "--black"
       options precede the data, greylistd responds "true" or  "false",  indicating  whether  the
       triplet is currently in the corresponding state.

EXAMPLES

   Exim 4
       A sample greylistd statement for Exim 4 is provided with this package, and can normally be
       found in "/usr/share/doc/greylistd/examples/exim4-acl-example.txt".

   Others
       What others?  :-)

       A prerequisite to greylisting in general  is  the  ability  to  perform  custom  filtering
       throughout  the  various  stages  in the SMTP transaction, most notably after the RCPT TO:
       SMTP command.  In particular, greylistd(8) can be invoked either over a UNIX domain socket
       or via the supplied greylist(1) utility.

       Although greylistd(8) is written mainly with Exim in mind, it should be possible to use it
       with any MTA that:

         -    Allows  arbitrary  strings  to  be   passed   on   via   a   UNIX   domain   socket
              (/var/run/greylistd/socket) or supplied to external programs (greylist(1)).

         -    Can defer the incoming delivery, based on the response.

       Some  MTAs  either  have  limited  or  no  support  for  such external filters in the SMTP
       transaction (e.g. Sendmail), or define a very custom  interface  for  such  filters  (e.g.
       Postifx "Policy Servers").

       That  said,  solutions  exist  for  these  other  MTAs  as  well.  For Postfix, check into
       "postgrey", and for Sendmail there is "relaydelay".  For other MTAs, check  the  links  on
       Evan Harris' greylisting project page:

           http://projects.puremagic.com/greylisting/links.html

FILES

   /etc/greylistd/config
       Configuration settings.  Currently, this file consists of three sections:

       [timeout]
           Lists  various  timeouts  used to determine how long to keep a new triplet greylisted,
           and when to expire previosly known triplets.

       [socket]
           Specifies path and permissions of the UNIX  domain  socket  on  which  greylistd  will
           listen.

       [data]
           Specifies  the  paths  to the data files, containing the data items and statistics, as
           well as an update interval specifying how often data will be written to these files.

   /var/lib/greylistd/states
       (default path, can be modified in the configuration file)

       Runtime data.  Theare are four sections: [white], [grey], [black] and  [statistics].   The
       first three sections consist of lines of the form:

           hash = lastseen firstseen count

       where:

         - hash is a 32-bit value representing a given triplet,

         - lastseen  is  a  32-bit  value representing the timestamp of last delivery attempt for
           this triplet,

         - firstseen is a 32-bit value representing the timestamp of first known delivery attempt
           for this triplet,

         - count  is  a  32-bit value representing the number of delivery attempts that have been
           made for this triplet in this time period.

       The [statistics] section contains a counter for each of the three  lists,  indicating  how
       many items that has ever made its way into these lists by way of the update protocol.

   /var/lib/greylistd/triplets
       (default path, can be modified in the configuration file)

       Unhashed  data - i.e. the original triplets passed to greylistd.  Internally, greylistd(8)
       hashes the provided data into a single 32-bit value for efficiency.  Prior to version 0.6,
       the  original data was not retained; as of version 0.6, data is optionally saved into this
       file.

       Data items are saved in the form:
           hash = data ...

   /var/run/greylistd/socket
       (default path, can be modified in the configuration file)

       The UNIX domain socket providing the main interface to "greylistd".  The  MTA  can  either
       connect to this socket directly, or use the supplied "greylist" utility to do so.

BUGS

       Because triplets and timestamps are hashed into simple 32-bit values, there is a very slim
       chance that deliveries that should have been greylisted are allowed through.  More so  for
       very busy sites.

       Commands  are actually executed in the daemon, not the "greylist" client.  If the user who
       invokes "greylist" interactively has a different time zone than the daemon  process,  time
       and date representations in the output will reflect those of the daemon.

AUTHOR

       This  python  script  and  manual  page  is written by Tor Slettnes, originally for Debian
       GNU/Linux.

COPYRIGHT

       Copyright © 2004-2005 Tor Slettnes.

       This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of
       the  GNU  General  Public  License  as  published  by the Free Software Foundation; either
       version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

       This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY  WARRANTY;
       without  even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
       See the GNU General Public License for more details.

       On a Debian GNU/Linux system, the full text of the GPL is available in  /usr/share/common-
       licenses/GPL.  It is also available at:

           http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html

SEE ALSO

       http://projects.puremagic.com/greylisting/
              Evan Harris' greylisting whitepaper

       greylist(1)
              Command-line interface to the greylist daemon.

       greylistd-setup-exim4(8)
              Utility to add/remove support for greylistd in Exim 4 configuration files.