NAME¶
grossd - Greylisting of Suspicious Sources - the Server
SYNOPSIS¶
grossd [
-dCDhnrV] [
-f config] [{
-p|
-P}
pidfile]
DESCRIPTION¶
grossd is a greylisting server, and more. It's blazingly fast and
amazingly resource efficient. It can be configured to query DNSBL databases,
and enforce greylisting only for hosts that are found on those databases. It
can block hosts that match multiple databases. It can be replicated and run
parallel on two servers. It supports Sun Java System Messaging Server, Postfix
and Exim. Sendmail Milter implementation needs testing.
Theory of operation¶
Gross consists of
grossd, the greylisting daemon, and a client library
for SJSMS. The server also implements Postfix content filtering protocol.
Upon receiving a request from a client,
grossd first validates it. The
request includes a triplet (`smtp-client-ip', `sender-address',
`recipient-address'). A hash is then calculated and matched against the Bloom
filters. If a match is found, and test result does not exceed
block_threshold value,
grossd sends an OK (STATUS_TRUST)
message.
If the triplet is not in the Bloom filters (has not been seen recently,)
grossd then runs configured checks against the client information.
Based on check results
grossd returns the client a result. Possible
results are STATUS_TRUST, STATUS_BLOCK and STATUS_GREY. The final response is
query protocol specific.
The Bloom filters are updated according the
update configuration option.
A Bloom filter is a very efficient way to store data. It's a probabilistic
data structure, which means that there is a possibility of error when querying
the database. False positives are possible, but false negatives are not. This
means that there is a possibility that grossd will falsely give an
STATUS_TRUST response when a connection should be greylisted. By sizing the
bloom filters, you can control the error possibility to meet your needs. The
right bloom filter size depends on the number of entries in the database, that
is, the retention time versus the number of handled connections.
OPTIONS¶
- -C
- Create the statefile and exit. The statefile configuration option
must be specified in the configuration file.
- -D
- Make debugging output more verbose. It can be set twice for maximum
verbosity.
- -d
- Run grossd on foreground without daemonizing the process.
grossd will output to terminal instead of using syslog.
- -f config
- Specifies the name of the configuration file. The default is
/etc/etc/grossd.conf
- -h
- Output short usage information and exit.
- -n
- Enable dry-run.
- -P pidfile
- Bail out if the pidfile already exists. Create pidfile after the
check.
- -p pidfile
- Create the pidfile. Overwrite if it already exists.
- -r
- Disable replication.
- -V
- Output version information and exit.
FILES¶
/etc/grossd.conf
SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS¶
Run
grossd under some unprivileged user id. If started as root
grossd will
setuid() itself to nobody's user id. There are no
known security flaws but you must not expose
grossd to the Internet. It
could be used for a DoS against a domain's DNS servers by an attacker as there
is no authentication in grossd.
DIAGNOSTICS¶
grossd daemon exits 0 if success, and >0 if an error occurs.
SEE ALSO¶
Regarding the configuration both the daemon and MTA's, refer to
grossd.conf(5)
Gross project site: <
http://code.google.com/p/gross/>
Bloom filters: <
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom_filter>
DNS queries are done asynchronously using c-ares library
<
http://daniel.haxx.se/projects/c-ares/>.
AUTHORS¶
Eino Tuominen and Antti Siira