[Mimedefang] Fw: [Asrg] user-level blacklisting patented

[Herbert Straub]

Michael Sofka wrote:

>On Wednesday 16 March 2005 04:10 pm, Chris Myers wrote:
>  
>
>>Well, after nearly 6 years and lots of hand wringing, we finally were
>>awarded US patent 6,868,498 for our user-level blacklisting as long-ago
>>disclosed to the ASRG in
>>http://www.shaftek.org/publications/asrg-ipr.html#4.2 .
>>
>>USPTO link:
>>http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/ne
>>tahtml/search-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=ptxt&s1=6,868,498.WKU.&OS=PN/
>>6,868,498&RS=PN/6,868,498
>>
>>We even got a little bit of coverage from our local press
>>http://www.bizjournals.com/pacific/stories/2005/03/14/daily22.html?f=et71
>>
>>We take the mail-from/rcpt-to pair to decide whether to return an error
>>before the DATA command is accepted.
>>    
>>
>
>Page 512--513 of the Second edition of "Sendmail" by Costales and Allman,
>O'Reilly, 1997, Section 29.10.4 The check_compat Rule Set.
>
> Not all situations can be resolved by simply checking the recipient
> or sender address.  Sometimes you will need to make judgement based
> on pairs of addresses....
>
> Other uses for the check_compat rule set might be the followwing
> ...
> 
>    * Screening a particular recipient to prevent that user from
>      receiving objectionable mail form a specific source.
>
>I gave away my copy of the first edition (cpright 1993), but I believe
>it gave a similar example, but using the checkcompat() routine.  If any
>list members have a copy of the first edition, please post.
>
>Mike
>
>  
>
I have the first edition of Sendmail (Copyright 1993 O'Reilly, printed 
November 1993, Page 191 "Uses of checkcompat () in conf.c:

How checkcompat() works:
... Next, it calls the checkcompat() routine. If checkcompat() returns 
TRUE the message is delivered. Otherwise the message is rejected. The 
checkcompat() routine is called once for each recipient...

The argument given to checkcompat () is Address *to... Envelope 
information is available in the global variable CurEnv.  There are three 
examples for checkcompat. One example illustrates the usage of a 
do-while loop, which checks each one of the recipient.

This is under circumstances an interessting Usenet Posting (1994-01-19 
03:01:15 PST)  Message-ID: <Pnews.bruce.758847026.25042 at blilly.uucp>: 
... compares the envelope sender and recipient addresses and returns an 
error if the condition is met that

Or this posting (Message-ID: <1ql05a$jpd at st-james.comp.vuw.ac.nz>):

     Permission is based on entries contained in an authorisation
     file ( /usr/local/lib/mail/mail_auth by default).  Each line
     has four entries: channel name , OK or BLOCK , sender
     address , recipient address(es) . The channel name is a
     string indicating the name of the outgoing channel.  The
     sender and recipient addresses are full regular expressions.

       ....

     A record of the results is stored in a log file (
     /usr/adm/mail_auth.log by default).  Sucessful comparisons
     have a record prefixed with 'O' (Outgoing) and rejected mes-
     sages have an 'R' flag.