Postfix user is not allowed to submit mail
I am running a webserver on debian wheezy with postfix and about 3 months ago I had a major spam problem with one my domains with web21 id. I made a fresh wordpress install and everything and the problem was gone for about 3 months and this time although I have set !web21 in my main.cf to disallow this user to send mail I still get tones of :
May 8 13:53:05 htz postfix/sendmail[16190]: fatal: User web21(5012) is not allowed to submit mail
May 8 13:53:06 htz postfix/sendmail[16191]: fatal: User web21(5012) is not allowed to submit mail
May 8 13:53:07 htz postfix/sendmail[16192]: fatal: User web21(5012) is not allowed to submit mail
May 8 13:53:07 htz postfix/sendmail[16193]: fatal: User web21(5012) is not allowed to submit mail
May 8 13:53:08 htz postfix/sendmail[16194]: fatal: User web21(5012) is not allowed to submit mail
May 8 13:53:09 htz postfix/sendmail[16195]: fatal: User web21(5012) is not allowed to submit mail
May 8 13:53:26 htz postfix/sendmail[16196]: fatal: User web21(5012) is not allowed to submit mail
May 8 13:53:27 htz postfix/sendmail[16197]: fatal: User web21(5012) is not allowed to submit mail
May 8 13:53:28 htz postfix/sendmail[16198]: fatal: User web21(5012) is not allowed to submit mail
May 8 13:53:29 htz postfix/sendmail[16199]: fatal: User web21(5012) is not allowed to submit mail
May 8 13:53:29 htz postfix/sendmail[16200]: fatal: User web21(5012) is not allowed to submit mail
May 8 13:53:31 htz postfix/sendmail[16201]: fatal: User web21(5012) is not allowed to submit mail
May 8 13:53:31 htz postfix/sendmail[16202]: fatal: User web21(5012) is not allowed to submit mail
May 8 13:53:32 htz postfix/sendmail[16203]: fatal: User web21(5012) is not allowed to submit mail
May 8 13:53:32 htz postfix/sendmail[16204]: fatal: User web21(5012) is not allowed to submit mail
May 8 13:53:33 htz postfix/sendmail[16205]: fatal: User web21(5012) is not allowed to submit mail
May 8 14:07:22 htz postfix/sendmail[16468]: fatal: User web21(5012) is not allowed to submit mail
May 8 14:07:23 htz postfix/sendmail[16469]: fatal: User web21(5012) is not allowed to submit mail
May 8 14:07:25 htz postfix/sendmail[16470]: fatal: User web21(5012) is not allowed to submit mail
May 8 14:07:26 htz postfix/sendmail[16471]: fatal: User web21(5012) is not allowed to submit mail
May 8 14:07:27 htz postfix/sendmail[16472]: fatal: User web21(5012) is not allowed to submit mail
May 8 14:07:28 htz postfix/sendmail[16473]: fatal: User web21(5012) is not allowed to submit mail
I have run the antivirus multiple times and there was no infected file found.
I wonder how am I able to understand what these mails are / where are they going / and how can I track down the method they are using to send all these spams ?
First you can list all files owned by web21
user. Try to identify a strange filename, maybe in an strange location too. To do this, you can use this command find / -user web21
.
Second try look process with ps
to identify process which sending spam. Maybe you can catch it there.
Third, maybe spammer periodically send by crontab
, check every crontab
in your system to identified the bogus script.
Fourth, the spammer could be send email by send POST/GET request to particular page in your website. Check your web server log, this will point out which page the spammer targeted.