Category Archives: MX Alerts

This blog will contain updates on MxToolBox Services including maintenance schedules, upgrades, bug fixes and more. Please follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/mxtoolbox

CSMA Blacklist – Website Down

UPDATE 12/3/2010: It appears that the CSMA Blacklist is officially going offline. They have updated their website with these details:

Notice: Due to name server configuration issue, DNS traffic was temporarily rerouted to a server that provided improper results. The problem was resolved, however some lookups may return incorrect information for the next several hours. Please check back later if you are still having problems. NOTE: This list is scheduled to be deactivated and should no longer be used in active production.

My Engineers are currently working on removing that Blacklist from our tool as it is no longer a valid list.

—————

We have received reports that the RBL (Real Time Blacklists) CSMA has gone down.  My Engineers have completed an investigation and they discovered that the RBL CSMA isn’t dead, but their website is offline at this time. Please view the Google Cache of their website for more details. Our tool is working as it should however it appears that CSMA is having technical difficulties on their end.

MxToolBox is not affiliated with any Blacklists, we just provide a public tool that can be utilized to see if you are on a Blacklist. If you are on a Blacklist, rest assured as we do offer Blacklist Protection! For more information please feel free to visit our website or email us at info@mxtoolbox.com.

For more information on what Blacklists are and how MxToolBox can help, read this blog post. We’re always looking for new Blacklists to add, so if you want to suggest one to us, please send an email to support@mxtoolbox.com.

For information about other Blacklists that have shut down or Blacklists that are having problems, view this forum post.

SATOS Blacklist Disabled

We have received reports that the RBL (Real Time Blacklists) SATOS has gone down.  My Engineers have completed some investigation and they discovered that the RBL SATOS isn’t dead, but their website is offline. Please see the Google Cache for more details.

However, in the mean time, we are not able to get reliable results from rbl.cluecentral.net so it has been disabled it for now.

For more information on what Blacklists are and how MxToolBox can help, read this blog post.

MxToolBox is not affiliated with any Blacklists, we just provide a public tool that can be utilized to see if you are on a Blacklist. If you are on a Blacklist, rest assured as we do offer Blacklist Protection! For more information please feel free to visit our website or email us at info@mxtoolbox.com.

We’re always looking for new Blacklists to add, so if you want to suggest one to us, please send an email to support@mxtoolbox.com.

For information about other Blacklists that have shut down or Blacklists that are having problems, view this forum post.

New MxToolBox Website Released

Thank you to all that tested out our Beta website in the last few weeks. We have officially released our NEW website with a new layout and even better and bigger tools! We affectionately call our tool the Super Tool as it combines all the tools into one Super Tool.

About the SuperTool!

All of your MX record, DNS, blacklist and SMTP diagnostics in one integrated tool.  Input a domain name orIP Address or Host Name. Links in the results will guide you to otherrelevant tools and information.  And you’ll have a chronological history of your results.

If you already know exactly what you want, you can force a particular test or lookup.  Try some of these examples:

(e.g. “blacklist: 127.0.0.2” will do a blacklist lookup)

command explanation
blacklist: Check IP or host for reputation
smtp: Test mail server SMTP (port 25)
mx: DNS MX records for domain
a: DNS A record IP address for host name
spf: Check SPF records on a domain
txt: Check TXT records on a domain
ptr: DNS PTR record for host name
cname: DNS canonical host name to IP address
scan: Perform a port scan on the host    New!
whois: Get domain registration information    New!
arin: Get IP address block information    New!
Other tools coming soon.
http: Get web page at URL
https: Get web page at URL using SSL encryption
ping: Perform a standard ICMP ping
trace: Perform a standard ICMP trace route

Feedback: If you run into any problems with the site or have an idea that you think would make it better, we would appreciate your feedback. Please leave us a note in our forums.

Warning – Reverse DNS does not match SMTP Banner

What does Warning – Reverse DNS does not match SMTP Banner mean?

The short answer is that the reverse IP address name is not contained in the server HELO or EHLO banner.  In the example below, the string “someotherdomain.com” is not found anywhere in the server banner, which is reporting “example.com“.  This is only a warning, and in some cases you may have no control over this.  However, if you have the ability to make these match, you should.  Some mail servers look for this and use it to mark messages you send as questionable.  Most mail systems will not reject your messages outright, but this may effect your spam score increasing the likelihood your messages will be marked as spam. 

In other words, it is a best-practice you should endeavor to follow.  It doesn’t mean you are a bad person or won’t be able to send email.

220 mx.example.com StrongMail SMTP Service at Wed, 09 Sep 2009 17:00:01 -0700

http://www.mxtoolbox.com/public/images/btn_green.gif Not an open relay.
http://www.mxtoolbox.com/public/images/btn_green.gif 0 seconds – Good on Connection time
http://www.mxtoolbox.com/public/images/btn_green.gif 0.156 seconds – Good on Transaction time
http://www.mxtoolbox.com/public/images/btn_green.gif OK – 1.2.3.4 resolves to mail.someotherdomain.com
http://www.mxtoolbox.com/public/images/btn_yellow.gif Warning – Reverse DNS does not match SMTP Banner

Zimbra Security Vulnerability Report Update: July 2, 2009

Zimbra has issued an update on the potential security risk found in versions 4.5 and earlier. MxToolBox recommends that all Zimbra users read the below notification and make the recommended changes.

Follow up message
Zimbra: the leader in next-generation messaging and collaboration
Greetings ,

This is a follow-up communication after yesterday’s initial security alert and contains additional information and resources for ZCS Network Edition and Open Source Edition users.

DESCRIPTION

Those who did not view the first alert should know Zimbra has been made aware of a potentially critical security vulnerability in Zimbra Collaboration Suite. All released versions of ZCS Network Edition and Open Source Edition are impacted.

This vulnerability allows unauthorized, remote access to files that are readable by the “zimbra user” account on the ZCS Mailbox Server (also known as mailbox service, “mailboxd”, or “tomcat” on versions 4.5 and earlier).

SOLUTION

A patch file has been provided already (see below); it does not require you to fully upgrade your Zimbra server, and if you have multiple servers, the patch needs to be applied to all servers running the ZCS Mailbox Server (“mailboxd”).

This is a critical vulnerability and we recommend all customers patch their systems immediately if not already done.

We would like to thank Hubert Seiwert, as well as John Stamatakis and Arjun Pednekar, for the discovery and reporting of the vulnerability.

LATEST PATCH FILE AND INSTALLATION INFORMATION

Zimbra customers should go to the Zimbra Support Portal for the latest installation instructions and patch file downloads. Customers can also create support tickets in the Portal if you need help or require more information from Zimbra.

https://support.zimbra.com
(please copy-and-paste this URL into your browser)

Contact your Zimbra sales representative if you do not have Support Portal access set up (sales@zimbra.com).

Customers and community members may visit the Zimbra Forums for similar download information and updated instructions.

http://www.zimbra.com/forums/announcements/30754-criticalsecurityissue.html
(please copy-and-paste this URL into your browser)

Sincerely

The Zimbra Support Team


MxToolBox is on Twitter! Make sure to follow us so that you stay up to date on any changes to our system, new blogs, new information etc.

Free Server Monitoring Tool – Server Alerts Down

We greatly appreciate the feedback from our Free Monitoring Tool users regarding the issue of Server Alerts not being delivered. We are currently working on it and it should be fixed shortly.

This is just one of the features included in the Free Monitoring Tool and we encourage our customers to continue using the product. Please continue to let us know your feedback or any improvements you would like to see.

Stay tuned to our blog and Forums for more updates.

UPDATE 5/20/2009 @ 8:59pm: Server Alerts are now functioning again, we apologize to everyone for this interruption in service. We were working on upgrade the database and code and the most recent code roll out did cause a problem. We have resolved this problem at this time.

UPDATE 5/22/2009: We are aware that the Free Monitoring Tool is issuing some false positive alerts at this time. We are working on correcting this as quickly as possible.

UPDATE 5/22/2009: The false positive problem has been brought under control.  There were two issues, both related to a software update.   The first was that previously, we were only alerting if your email server failed to accept our TCP connection on port 25.  Sending us a 400 SMTP error would not generate an alert.  The code change caused servers that were either issuing 40x errors OR terminating our SMTP connections abruptly to be flagged as down.  The numerous UP/down alerts were caused by servers that were running anti-spam software and intermittently refusing our SMTP sessions or issuing 400 deferrals.

Remember, to reduce the chance of false positives from our monitoring service, you should whitelist 64.20.227.0/24 on your email servers or gateways that we are monitoring.

We have restored the behavior of ONLY alerting you that your server is down if it fails to accept a TCP connection on port 25.  Second, we have increased our timeouts, giving slow or busy servers more time to respond before flagging them as down.

We appreciate your patience as we have worked to resolve this and sincerely regret any trouble this has caused you.

Real Time Blacklist (RBL) Maintenance for our Website

Over the years we have been happy to provide our Free Blacklist Lookup Tool among our other Free Tools and we appreciate all of your feedback and suggestions. We have gone through our current database and have removed these RBLs due to either them being shutdown or faulty results:

SPAMBAG
DNSBLNETAUOHPS
DNSBLNETAUOMRS
DNSBLNETAUOSPS
DNSBLNETAUOSRS
DNSBLNETAUOWFS
DNSBLNETAUOWPS
DNSBLNETAURDTS
DNSBLNETAURICN
DNSBLNETAURMST
DNSBLNETAUT1

MxToolBox is not affiliated with any Blacklists, we just provide a public tool that can be utilized to see if you are on a Blacklist. If you are on a Blacklist, rest assured as we do offer Blacklist Protection! For more information please feel free to visit our website or email us at info@mxtoolbox.com.

We’re always looking for new Blacklists to add, so if you want to suggest one to us, please send an email to support@mxtoolbox.com.

For information about other Blacklists that have shut down or Blacklists that are having problems, view this forum post.

SPAMBAG Real Time Blacklist (RBL) Goes Down

We have received reports that the RBL (Real Time Blacklists) SPAMBAG has gone down. We have removed it from our database and no more alerts should be received.

This RBL was a public data base which listed suspected sources of spam and has officially closed their doors. Most RBLS (Real Time Blacklists) when they wish to dissolve completely will commonly blacklist the entire internet in order to get the attention of those people using them to stop attempting to contact their IPs.

Fore more information on what Blacklists are and how MxToolBox can help, read this blog post.

For more information on SPAMBAG, go here.

MxToolBox is not affiliated with any Blacklists, we just provide a public tool that can be utilized to see if you are on a Blacklist. If you are on a Blacklist, rest assured as we do offer Blacklist Protection! For more information please feel free to visit our website or email us at info@mxtoolbox.com.

We’re always looking for new Blacklists to add, so if you want to suggest one to us, please send an email to support@mxtoolbox.com.

For information about other Blacklists that have shut down or Blacklists that are having problems, view this forum post.

What Blacklists Are and How MxToolBox Helps

Actual MxToolBox Tshirt

One of the most common security challenges for companies is keeping their organization’s email off of Blacklists. When your company gets Blacklisted it will cause major trouble for your business and it will slow down your communication with current customers, prospects and in general the outside world. Email communication is a critical and profit dependent function of any business and this type of communication interruption is both time consuming, costly and completely avoidable.

Most companies discover they have been Blacklisted when they start hearing complaints that their emails have not been received or messages that have been sent are bouncing back. This is really the worst way to find out your company has been Blacklisted because when customers start calling to complain there is already trouble and then you are under pressure to figure out the problem.

A Blacklist, otherwise known as a Real Time Blacklists (RBLs) is a list of problematic IPs that are monitored by Blacklist companies. There are many Blacklist companies and while MxToolBox does provide a Free Blacklist Lookup Tool, we do not control or are affiliated with any Blacklists in any shape or form. Many ISP providers subscribe to Blacklists as an inexpensive means of controlling spam and abusive email senders. There are many reasons a company may end up on a Blacklist, more often that not it’s because a company has not taken appropriate steps to secure their email infrastructure or has been compromised by spammers, hackers, or virus propagators.

Once your IP has been Blacklisted, what can you do?

Well that is where MxToolBox steps in to help. With email service through MxToolBox you won’t have to worry about Blacklists. Our highly trained IT professionals will eliminate your Blacklist problem and we will help you find the root cause of the Blacklist and our service will keep your system secure so the problem will not return.

With our email service your company won’t get Blacklisted and once we have eliminated that worry you can rest assured knowing that if you have any other challenges a real person is only a phone call away. We pride ourselves on our high level of customer service and our ability to solve your email challenges.

If your company has not had your productivity hampered by being Blacklisted then now is the time to sign up for our secure email service. With MxToolBox Email Solutions you can be secure in your knowledge that your email is safe and you won’t suffer the expense of having your email go down at a time when every customer counts.

It is times like these that the ability to cut costs and add productivity makes the most sense. Not only will email hosting by MxToolBox protect you from Blacklists, but it will also keep you safe with world class perimeter protection that will keep you secure from phishing as well as viruses and spam. We offer several levels of Email Hosting Solutions to fit any company and budget and we even offer Zimbra that allows you to access your secure email on any smart phone.

MxToolBox is not affiliated with any Blacklists, we just provide a public tool that can be utilized to see if you are on a Blacklist. If you are on a Blacklist, rest assured as we do offer Blacklist Protection! For more information please feel free to visit our website or email us at info@mxtoolbox.com.

We’re always looking for new Blacklists to add, so if you want to suggest one to us, please send an email to support@mxtoolbox.com.

For information about other Blacklists that have shut down or Blacklists that are having problems, view this forum post.

MxToolBox is on Twitter! Make sure to follow us so that you stay up to date on any changes to our system, new blogs, new information etc.

Schulte RBL issued incorrect Blacklist warnings

This morning we received a few notices from our Free/Paid Monitoring users that they were listed on the Schulte RBL, but when they used our Free Blacklist Lookup Tool they were not listed there. We just visited the Schulte RBL website this morning to see if they had any reported problems yesterday and they have posted this warning:

2009-02-27 note
—————

Late last night a DNS server configuration error on one of the
authoritative DNS servers for rbl.schulte.org caused a temporary
error in RBL blacklisting status data for all queries to this
particular DNS server. The problem was identified and resolved
as soon as I was made aware of it. No new bad DNS data should be
served from this machine. However, remote servers may cache this
information.

If you continue to have problems with this RBL listing your IP, please contact us at support@mxtoolbox.com with your IP and domain name and we can manually update your account.

MxToolBox is not affiliated with any Blacklists, we just provide a public tool that can be utilized to see if you are on a Blacklist. If you are on a Blacklist, rest assured as we do offer Blacklist Protection! For more information please feel free to visit our website or email us at info@mxtoolbox.com.

We’re always looking for new Blacklists to add, so if you want to suggest one to us, please send an email to support@mxtoolbox.com.

For information about other Blacklists that have shut down or Blacklists that are having problems, view this forum post.