formmail.pl: What is it and/or where to get it?

[martin weinberger]

Hi all,

I was using FrontPage 2002 but upgraded at somepoint to Dreamweaver.
Anyways, I was looking at my website logs and noticed a whole bunch of error
pages being shown everyday. The webhost company came back and said that is
because of the missing file

/cgi-bin/formmail.pl

I did a search inside all of my webpages, but the search turned up nothing
for "formmail.pl". I did a Google search and it appears that ".pl" means
that the file in question is a Perl script that that this file deals with
web email. I have email links on my site, but... Where am I supposed to get
this file and its dependancies or better yet how do I get my website to not
want this file and its dependancies.

Thanks a lot in advance. I'm sorry if this quesiton sounds stupid, but there
is still much that I don't know about HTML and web design.

 

[Nik Coughin]

Hi all,

I was using FrontPage 2002 but upgraded at somepoint to Dreamweaver.
Anyways, I was looking at my website logs and noticed a whole bunch
of error pages being shown everyday. The webhost company came back
and said that is because of the missing file

/cgi-bin/formmail.pl

I did a search inside all of my webpages, but the search turned up
nothing for "formmail.pl". I did a Google search and it appears that
".pl" means that the file in question is a Perl script that that this
file deals with web email. I have email links on my site, but...
Where am I supposed to get this file and its dependancies or better
yet how do I get my website to not want this file and its
dependancies.

Thanks a lot in advance. I'm sorry if this quesiton sounds stupid,
but there is still much that I don't know about HTML and web design.

You neither have nor need it. The reason it shows up in your error logs is
that people who send mass spam are trying to use your site to forward spam
email. Because you don't have it (formmail.pl), they cannot do so and when
they try to access it it shows an error in your log.

From http://www.mailvalley.com/formmail/:

"Formmail.pl, one of the most-used perl scripts on the Web, is designed to
send data entered into a Web form to an e-mail address. This script could be
exploited by a malicious user who could use Formmail as a spam server. If
you use this script, spammers may be able to use it to send spam freely
using your server's resources.
A L E R T !!!
Formmail exploit is getting worse day by day. The real horror is that you
may not even know if your server is exploited or not. A spammer can exploit
your formmail script to flood thousands of Internet users with junk mail.
The mail header will show your domain name and not even the spammer's IP
address. Unfortunately, The recipient of spam will yell at you and not at
the spammer. Such incidents have already been reported."

 

[martin weinberger]

Wow! I should do nothing then?

Thanks!

 

[Nik Coughin]

Wow! I should do nothing then?

Thanks!

Yes, best to do nothing. There are a lot of files like this that people
will request from your website in order to try and compromise your security,
so keep that in mind in future when you see similar error messages in your
log

 

[Toby A Inkster]

Wow! I should do nothing then?

Yep.

Your website doesn't seem to need formmail.pl, so why worry about it?

The number of hits you are getting for it is probably just spammers
loooking for a copy of it, because certain early versions of formmail.pl
can be used to relay spam.