TL;DR: In this article, I explain what is an MDA and how to write a custom one from scratch using only shell scripting. Shout outs to my patrons ! As usual, a huge thanks goes to the people sponsoring me on patreon, github or liberaPay, the work in this post was made possible by my sponsorship. What is a Mail Delivery Agent (MDA) ? When a mail enters an SMTP server it is initially stored in the server queue before being moved to its next destination. [Read More]

TL;DR: - Crafted the OpenSMTPD 6.8.0p1 release - Fixed several bugs in the way - Proposed a few OpenSMTPD improvements to OpenBSD - Working on my OpenSMTPD book Shout outs to my patrons ! As usual, a huge thanks goes to the people sponsoring me on patreon, github or liberaPay, the work in this post was made possible by my sponsorship. Let’s start with some LoFi Relax. About sponsorship First of all, I must say how grateful and happy I am that people value my work enough to trust and sponsor me, I appreciate it a lot and it is a huge motivation booster. [Read More]

TL;DR: Haven't posted since July but I wasn't slacking, got temporarily context-switched out of opensource stuff. I tanked a year in work psychology As some of you know, I study work psychology and have been attending evening classes for the last four years, sometimes up to 9 hours / week and more often between 3 and 6 hours / week. I’m pretty invested as you can tell, it’s a lot of time that I could spend in bed but that I spend in class instead :-) [Read More]

TL;DR: worked on my webmail, on a custom MDA and on a python framework for API development. Shout outs to my patrons ! As usual, a huge thanks goes to the people sponsoring me on patreon or github, the work in this post was made possible by my sponsorship. Worked on my webmail Again, I’d like to emphasize that this is something that’s going to span over many months so… don’t hold your breath. [Read More]

TL;DR: Reworked my infrastructure at poolp.org, implemented folder pinning, worked on my webmail. Shout outs to my patrons ! As usual, a huge thanks goes to the people sponsoring me on patreon or github, the work in this post was made possible by my sponsorship. poolp.org infrastructure rework I decided to move my servers from online.net to vultr.com (affiliation link). I have been at online.net for hosting since 2007 and have always been happy with their services, however OpenBSD has never been supported there and I always had to use custom install procedures and hope things go well. [Read More]

TL;DR: Worked on the OpenSMTPD 6.7 release; Did a lot of work on the new table API; Wrote several PoCs; WARNING: Examples of code and configuration that appear in this article are here to help illustrate and explain development stages of my work. They are subject to changes and must not be considered as user documentation. By the time you’re reading this, they will likely no longer work or reflect reality. [Read More]

TL;DR: Worked on my webmail; Did a bit of OpenSMTPD work; Shout outs to my patrons ! As usual, a huge thanks goes to the people sponsoring me on patreon or github, the work in this post was made possible by my sponsorship. Webmail vs mutt I started using console clients to read my mail back when I was a student in early 2000s, and I’ve been using mutt for as long as I can recall now. [Read More]

TL;DR: - I took a break to deal with personal stuff - I'm taking a long break from OpenBSD for personal reasons - I may or may not have experienced COVID-19, who knows - resumed work on OpenSMTPD and other projects This is a weird report This is a weird report. I’ll mix a bit of personal info to provide some context as to why I decided to leave the OpenBSD project, explain why this doesn’t mean I won’t be an active contributor, and give some small insight into my upcoming work. [Read More]

TL;DR: - Qualys released an advisory for a bad, bad vulnerability - an MTA is a very bad software to have a vulnerability in - hole was plugged but that's not enough, similar bugs should be mitigated in the future - article discusses what could have prevented escalation despite the bug What happened ? Qualys contacted by e-mail to tell me they found a vulnerability in OpenSMTPD and would send me the encrypted draft for advisory. [Read More]

TL;DR: - brought back libasr to OpenSMTPD, it is no longer an external dependency - libtls-enabled OpenSMTPD is now a thing - documented filters and improved reporting Shout outs to my sponsors ! As usual, a huge thanks goes to the people sponsoring me on patreon or github, the work in this post was made possible by my sponsorship. If you like my work, you can join my sponsors or share my reports and articles to help me find more people willing to sponsor me ! [Read More]