[Dovecot] SMTP Client authentication to remote Postfix/Dovecot

[Christian Benke]

Follow up - Looks like a private VPN is the best solution to tackle this:
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.mail.postfix.user/235903


On 18 March 2013 13:08, Christian Benke <benkokakao at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello!
>
> This is probably another basic question and i'm not even sure if it's
> something where Dovecot is involved, but i'll give it a shot.
>
> So i've setup Postfix with Dovecot and system-auth on my remote
> server. So far it looks like everything is working fine and dandy via
> SASL(PLAIN) and TLS.
>
> I'm just not happy about my local SMTP client settings. I'm going to
> try to work with mutt in the future, so i need a local MTA - i've
> decided to try it with Postfix.
> This works so far and i can send mails with mutt. However - my setup
> relies on smtp_sasl_password_maps for authentication.
>
> I'm not too happy to have plaintext-passwords of remote systems lying
> around on my local filesystem. It doesn't really ease my mind that the
> file is readable by root only, this doesn't help if my laptop's
> harddisk gets mounted elsewhere.
>
> Are there alternatives or better ways to do SMTP authentication?
>
> http://www.postfix.org/SASL_README.html#server_cyrus_comm says:
>> saslauthd can verify the SMTP client credentials by using them to log into an IMAP server
>
> So i have my mutt-client which is logged in to the remote Dovecot
> IMAP. Mutt uses the local MTA to send the mail. Is there some way to
> tell the local postfix or a local dovecot to authenticate the
> SMTP-Session via the existing IMAP-login? Or some other way where i at
> least don't rely on plaintext passwords but secure, encrypted hashes?
>
> Sorry if this is a redundant thread, "smtp client" authentication
> site:dovecot.org/list' and the likes are not exactly the most
> rewarding or unique search terms unfortunately.
>
> Thanks,
> Christian
>
>
> --
> Central Asia by bike, starting May 2013 - http://poab.org