Over the past several years, as email attacks against end users and their desktop systems have increased, direct attacks against email servers have decreased (although the decrease has been relative). However, servers are still vulnerable because attackers are still releasing exploits against Microsoft Exchange Server and even Sendmail. Let's look at a couple of common attacks and ways you can reduce or stop these attacks against your email servers.
Buffer-Overflow Exploits
A buffer overflow occurs when a software program, such as a mail server,
stores more data in a data buffer than was originally allowed for and no provision
exists for the unexpected input. Attackers can use this bug to make the mail
server execute other programs it was never intended to execute. If the mail
server runs at a privileged level, the entire system can be compromised. Even
if the mail server doesn't run in privileged mode, attackers can compromise
it and gain full access to its resources. . . .
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