Funny 220 response code...

[Rob Seastrom]

Robert Stratton <bob at stratton.net> writes:

> Our own Mr. Seastrom had my all time favorite SMTP response on his mail servers, intended to dissuade people doing reconnaissance. Something to the effect of 
>
> "451 xxx.xxx EXPN and VRFY are disabled, just send your damn mail."

Heh, actually you're conflating two different arenas for snarky
messages.  One DNS:

HDC-MAC42920:~ rs$ dig +short @bifrost.seastrom.com. version.bind. chaos txt
"Just send your damn query already"
HDC-MAC42920:~ rs$ 

and one SMTP:

rs at midgard [6] % telnet valhalla.seastrom.com 25
Trying 2610:178:1:1::b...
Connected to valhalla.seastrom.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 valhalla.seastrom.com ESMTP (NO UCE) All Spammers Must Die!
helo midgard.seastrom.com
250 valhalla.seastrom.com Hello midgard.seastrom.com [2610:178:1:1::c]
vrfy rs at seastrom.com
252 That would be telling...
expn rs at seastrom.com
550 Questions are a burden to others; answers are a prison for oneself
quit
221 valhalla.seastrom.com closing connection
Connection closed by foreign host.
rs at midgard [7] % 

I no longer have a copy of the POP3 server that I wrote at InterCon
(since it was 20 years ago I'm just as glad that I don't), but as you
may remember it had a STRAT command (alias to STAT) as well as NOOP
returning:

+OK I see NO OP here

-r