RE: [cobalt-users] formmail.pl

[baltimoremd@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

On Fri, 19 Apr 2002, Phil Beynon wrote:

> If a probe is successful your site address gets into a database somewhere
> which is being shared amongst these spammers.

Just for grins I created a directory with a name that would be very
uncommon for a cgi application, and created a dummy formmail.pl file.

It didn't take too long for the robots to "catalog" the directory and
file...and shortly after that the spammers started showing up.

So, since we can run scripts all over a domain, it would very prudent to
use a robots.txt file to exclude indexing of those areas that have
scripts, and as another poster mentioned...change the name of formail.pl
even if it's the latest "safe" version...

I don't have the time or skill...but I'd love to have a script that reads
the log and when it sees attempted access to formail.pl, it sends a
report containing a log snippet to root@the_ip_address_of_offender.

Thom