Tor server for port 443

Mike Cardwell tor at lists.grepular.com
Wed May 21 11:04:30 UTC 2008


Scott Bennett wrote:

>> The standardised port for SMTP submission is 587. See 
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_Mail_Transfer_Protocol specifically 
>> "Although some servers support port 465 for legacy secure SMTP in 
>> violation of the specifications"
> 
>      Huh.  Guess I'll have to look it up somewhere official then.  (wikipedia
> is not authoritative, even if it may well have it right.)  I was going on
> what it said in /etc/services on my FreeBSD 6.3 system, which is also not
> authoritative by any means, but still ought to have been correct.  I checked
> again, this time for 587, and it is listed as the service called "submission".
> I had no idea that that referred to any service having anything to do with
> email of any kind.  That prompted me to check the Solaris 5.8 system that I
> use for email.  Its /etc/services doesn't list 465 at all, but also lists
> 587 as "submission".

http://www.iana.org/assignments/port-numbers

The port 465 issue became particularly important recently when IANA 
actually assigned it for a real use. Previously it was an unassigned 
port that was hijacked by Microsoft for Outlook.

>> However. gmail do actually support both 587 with TLS *and* 465 with SSL 
>> on connect, on smtp.gmail.com.
>      Okay.  I'll check into it and may end up adding 587 to my allowed exits.
> Thanks for the tip.

While port 587 is the official standard port for email submission, it 
doesn't *require* the usage of SSL. GMail does however have this 
requirement.

Also, I'd still personally prefer to use port 465 over port 587 for mail 
submission when both are available, purely because when using port 465 
you negotitate SSL immediately, whilst with port 587 there is some plain 
text negotiation first which *could* accidently leak identifying 
information such as your hostname in the EHLO, to the Exit node.

Mike



More information about the tor-talk mailing list