Risk with FEATURE(nouucp)

UUCP addresses are those that use a ! character to separate address components. For example, the following address says to send the message first to the host hostA, and then hostA will relay that message to the user at hostB:

hostB!user@hostA

If you have tuned your site to prevent unintended relaying, misuse of the nouucp feature can open your site to an unexpected form of relaying.

Consider a workstation on your network that forwards all its mail to the central mail hub using LOCAL_RELAY (LOCAL_RELAY mc Macro on page 604) or LUSER_RELAY ($L on page 832). If that workstation also defines:

FEATURE(`nouucp', `nospecial')

addresses containing the ! character will not be recognized as special and will be forwarded to the mail hub as is.

If, on the mail hub, you forget to declare the FEATURE(nouucp), the as-is address forwarded to it will be recognized as special. Because the address was received from an internal workstation, relaying is allowed. The ! address will have the hostA part stripped and the result will be relayed to user@hostB.

Thus, it is a good idea to define nouucp on the mail hub if you define it on any of your workstations.

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