Author Archives: Bill Thorsteinson

Disabling SSLv3 to block Poodle

The new Poodle vulnerability lead me to disable SSLv3 on my Ubuntu server. I have TLS/SSL enabled on three services: apache2, exim4, and dovecot2. Each service required a different method to disable SSLv3. Ubuntu uses configuration files split into small pieces. The method should apply to other distributions, although the configuration files may be arranged […]

Disable TraceClassUnloading in Java6

I recently discovered logs filling up  with log messages for classes being unloaded during garbage collection.   After a little research, I found that the TraceClassUnloading switch gets turned on by the Xloggc switch.   After a little testing I found, that this can be resolved by adding the argument -XX:-TraceClassUnloading after the -Xloggc argument.

Hostnames for eximstats Rejections

I use eximstats to report my daily email traffic. I have a fairly high rate of rejections, and wanted hostnames listed in the rejection reports.    To resolve this I developed a patch to capture the hostname related to the IP address, and add this data to the rejection reports. The enhanced list saves me the […]

Securing your Email Reputation with SPF

SPF (Server Policy Framework) is a simple means to limit the ability of  others to forge your identity in email.  I first implemented it after a forged identity under my domain was used to send Spam.  Once SPF was configured,  the bounce messages quickly dropped off. Although not as frequently implemented as sender address checks, […]