Read RFC 5321 for SMTP. What does MTA stand for? Consider the following received
ID: 3921284 • Letter: R
Question
Read RFC 5321 for SMTP. What does MTA stand for? Consider the following received spam email (modified from a real spam email). Assuming only the originator of this spam email is malicious and all other hosts are honest, identify the malicious host that has generated this spam email
From - Fri Nov 07 13:41:30 2008
Return-Path: <tennis5@pp33head.com>
Received: from barmail.cs.umass.edu
(barmail.cs.umass.edu [128.119.240.3]) by cs.umass.edu
(8.13.1/8.12.6) for ; Fri, 7 Nov 2008
13:27:10 -0500
Received: from asusus-4b96 (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by
barmail.cs.umass.edu (Spam Firewall) for
<hg@cs.umass.edu>; Fri, 7 Nov 2008 13:27:07 -0500 (EST)
Received: from asusus-4b96 ([58.88.21.177]) by
barmail.cs.umass.edu for ; Fri,
07 Nov 2008 13:27:07 -0500 (EST)
Received: from [58.88.21.177] by
inbnd55.exchangeddd.com; Sat, 8 Nov 2008 01:27:07 +0700
From: "Jonny" <tennis5@pp33head.com>
To: <hg@cs.umass.edu>
Subject: How to secure your savings
Explanation / Answer
As defined in RFC 5321,MTA is the Acronym for Mail Transfer Agent. The process is that initially host dispatches the message to an Mail Transfer Agent. Then message undergoes a series of Mail Transfer Agents to reach the destinated receiver’s mail reader. We can observe that these kind of spam message follows a cycle of Mail Transfer Agents(MTA). Simple Mail Transfer Protocol(SMTP) servers are MTA's for the reason that they transport mails from sender to receiver.
A sincere MTA have to report about the information that from where it receives the message. Look that in this message, “asusus-4b96 ([58.88.21.177])” does not inform that from where it actually received the email. Since we assume only the originator is spam(dishonest), so “asusus-4b96 ([58.88.21.177])” must be the originator. If we carefully look at the mail once again We get to know that the mail is sent by "Jonny" with the email address <tennis5@pp33head.com>.
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