User not found

[bking]

I have a user, whos main account (system account..) name is being rejected in the mail logs with:

Password failure for user=breaker homedir= passwd=/etc//shadow
User not found user=breaker homedir=/home/cranky passwd=/home/cranky/etc//shadow

Now, user breaker is in /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow and /etc/group

Why are they showing up in the mail logs, trying to find the details in someone elses homedir?(cranky is a different user).

I have not had any complaints but have just noticed this in the logs.. When I try and auth using breaker as the username (system account not domain) and enter whatever password, the error I get is different..I get a password fail error(as i am just typing gibberish cos I dont know the password).

The errors I have been seeing are Password failure followed by User not found as per the above log entries...

I guess I have 3 questions:

1\ Why am I seeing a system account trying to auth from a different users homedir

2\ does this look like a CPE issue rather than a server issue?

3\ Any pointers on where else to look for this?

[mr.wonderful]

I see this in /var/log/maillog all the time and those are pop3 sessions to the box. You probably cant help it if your clients cant setup their pop3 connections properly.