Multi-site email spam attack

[Fbarajas]

Hi!

I'm using lfd's AUTHRELAY to block an IP if they send more than 100 mails. But now, some spammer got the password of 2 accounts, and it's relaying through several IPs. That is, when one IP gets blocked by lfd, it starts sending spam from another IP from another country:

Type: AUTHRELAY, Remote IP - 61.4.83.39 (CN/China/-)
Count: 101 emails relayed
Blocked: Temporary Block

Type: AUTHRELAY, Remote IP - 85.214.40.32 (DE/Germany/h1922363.stratoserver.net)
Count: 101 emails relayed
Blocked: Temporary Block

Type: AUTHRELAY, Remote IP - 87.238.161.78 (BE/Belgium/-)
Count: 101 emails relayed
Blocked: Temporary Block

Type: AUTHRELAY, Remote IP - 212.80.20.240 (IR/Iran, Islamic Republic of/-)
Count: 101 emails relayed
Blocked: Temporary Block

Type: AUTHRELAY, Remote IP - 94.23.146.176 (NL/Netherlands/-)
Count: 101 emails relayed
Blocked: Temporary Block

When I detected the problem, I changed the compromised email account password.

What else can I do? Is there a way to prevent this from happening again?

Thanks!

 

[arunsv84]

You should scan the local machine that you use to manage the compromised email account and make sure that its free from virus/trojan.

Thanks!

 

[Fbarajas]

You should scan the local machine that you use to manage the compromised email account and make sure that its free from virus/trojan.

Yes, I already did that. Is there anyway I can protect the server from this kind of attacks?

Thanks!

 

[kdean]

If you use ConfigServer Firewall you can try the below section which can be used to detect multiple IPs being used to send mail for an account and set triggers for when it should start blocking all the involved IPs automatically. Granted this could block your user's valid IP, but that's a small price to pay to cut off spam sending relatively quickly automatically. You could always re-enable the user's IP when dealing with the issue.

# Distributed SMTP Logins. This option will keep track of successful SMTP
# logins. If the number of successful logins to an individual account is at
# least LF_DISTSMTP in LF_DIST_INTERVAL from at least LF_DISTSMTP_UNIQ IP
# addresses, then all of the IP addresses will be blocked. These options only
# apply to the exim MTA
#
# This option can help mitigate the common SMTP account compromise attacks that
# use a distributed network of zombies to send spam
#
# A sensible setting for this might be 5, depending on how many different
# IP addresses you expect to an individual SMTP account within LF_DIST_INTERVAL
#
# To disable set to "0"
LF_DISTSMTP = 4

# Set the following to the minimum number of unique IP addresses that trigger
# LF_DISTSMTP. LF_DISTSMTP_UNIQ must be <= LF_DISTSMTP for this to work
LF_DISTSMTP_UNIQ = 3

# If this option is set to 1 the blocks will be permanent
# If this option is > 1, the blocks will be temporary for the specified number
# of seconds
LF_DISTSMTP_PERM = 1

# This is the interval during which a distributed FTP or SMTP attack is
# measured
LF_DIST_INTERVAL = 900

 

[Fbarajas]

If you use ConfigServer Firewall you can try the below section which can be used to detect multiple IPs being used to send mail for an account and set triggers for when it should start blocking all the

Thanks kdean. That was just what I was looking for

 

[krival96]

how can i use this ?

 

[cPanelMichael]

how can i use this ?

Could you clarify your question or provide more details?

Thanks.