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Spam using apache

Hi, Im running mandrake 7.2 with sendmail 8.11 and apache 1.3.12 (I know it's old, but its a bit tricky to upgrade that server at the moment). We received some complaints that our server had been used to spam, and when I looked at the sendmail logs, it shows an email being sent nearly every second but it says "from=apache" and I havent got a clue how they're doing this. There are a few websites on that server that have formmail (perl) and php contact pages that have the to field already specified, could this be the cause?

Also, could it be that its because I'm running old versions of apache and or sendmail? Whats the best way to stop this person spamming through my server?

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_nn_

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periwinkle

I agree with _nn_ - there were a number of security issues in the old Matt's script archive formmail - see:

http://www.monkeys.com/anti-spam/formmail-advisory.pdf
http://www.toto.com/cgi-bin/periwinkle/newsget?id=A00083
http://www.toto.com/cgi-bin/periwinkle/newsget?id=A00065

(also go to http://www.securityfocus.com/search and search on formmail )

pjedmond

If the formail.pl script is being used to email you only, and you don't mind receiving the odd bit of SPAM, you can configure the formail script to pass all the environemntal variables to the script, and actually start to locate the person responsible for the spamming. I personally hardcode the 'to address' in all my scripts wherever possible in order to prevent this type of abuse of the script.