Posts
2020
June 2020: poolp.org, folder pinning and webmail work
·1698 words·8 mins
Gilles Chehade
Technology
TL;DR: Reworked my infrastructure at poolp.org, implemented folder pinning, worked on my webmail. poolp.org infrastructure rework # I decided to move my servers from online.
May 2020: OpenSMTPD 6.7.1p1 release, table-procexec and many PoCs
·2983 words·15 mins
Gilles Chehade
Technology
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.
April 2020: worked on a webmail and a bit of OpenSMTPD too
·1801 words·9 mins
Gilles Chehade
Technology
TL;DR: Worked on my webmail; Did a bit of OpenSMTPD work; 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.
Anxiety, OpenBSD break, COVID-19 and resuming work
·1284 words·7 mins
Gilles Chehade
Personal
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.
OpenSMTPD advisory dissected
·4748 words·23 mins
Gilles Chehade
Technology
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 ?
January 2020: OpenSMTPD work - libasr and libtls
·1770 words·9 mins
Gilles Chehade
Technology
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 No shiny feature this month, ungrateful work # OpenSMTPD has had quite a few features implemented since its latest major release.
2019
December 2019: OpenSMTPD and filters work, articles and goodies
·2954 words·14 mins
Gilles Chehade
Technology
TL;DR: - wrote, reworked and translated multiple articles this month - got some goodies ready for my patrons - lots of work in OpenSMTPD's grammar, documentation and filters protocol WARNING:
Decentralised SMTP is for the greater good
·1234 words·6 mins
Gilles Chehade
Technology
TL;DR: - SMTP is the way computers exchange e-mails - it is a decentralised protocol meaning that ANYONE can run a node and be independant - it is being centralised at companies that have a history of abuse - it is being centralised in a country that has a history of abuse Where did you read this already ?
SPF-aware greylisting and filter-greylist
·2345 words·12 mins
Gilles Chehade
Technology
TL;DR: - greylisting is a sound idea - yet it is not really practical today - people tend to disable it or find work-arounds - SPF-aware greylisting makes greylisting usable again SMTP failures in a nutshell # SMTP is a fail-safe protocol which attempts very hard to ensure that messages do not get lost once they are in transit.
November 2019 report: OpenSMTPD 6.6.1p1, filter-greylist and tons of portable cleanup
·3994 words·19 mins
Gilles Chehade
Technology
TL;DR: - our CI was improved - a new OpenSMTPD release, 6.6.1p1 took place to deal with portable issues - multiple portability issues were adressed - new table API in the works - filter-rspamd and filter-senderscore were improved - filter-greylist proof-of-concept published - wrote 2 chapters for my book Got myself a pinebook pro # I got myself an arm64 pinebook pro: