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Add Fail2ban to Postal Server's SMTP server in Docker container.

This is a small tutorial on how to prevent brute force attacks to the SMTP server container included into Postal Server using Fail2ban. As logs are sent to stdout, it is necessary to write them to a file so File2ban can monitor it. This can be achieved changing the postal configuration to write logs to a file, binding container's log's folder to another in the host and set up a new filter in Fail2ban to read the binded log file.

Tested in Ubuntu Server 22.04.1 LTS with Postal v2.11.2.

Corrections, comments and suggestions are welcome!

Postal Server configuration

In /opt/postal/config/postal.yml set stdout to false:

[...]

logging:
  # Specify options for the logging
  stdout: false

[...]

Add a docker-compose.override.yml in /opt/postal/install folder in order to extend all server volumes without modifying the original docker-compose.yml. The goal is to bind the log's folder inside the container to an accessible directory to fail2ban, installed on the host. Also, as logs aren't managed by Docker anymore, it's necessary to bind all folders to use logrotate and keep the logs under control. /opt/postal/log/ is the path where the log files will be on the host and /opt/postal/app/log/ is the path where log files are located in the containers.

version: "3.9"
services:
  web:
    volumes:
      - /opt/postal/log/web:/opt/postal/app/log/

  smtp:
    volumes:
      - /opt/postal/log/smtp:/opt/postal/app/log/

  worker:
    volumes:
      - /opt/postal/log/worker:/opt/postal/app/log/

  cron:
    volumes:
      - /opt/postal/log/cron:/opt/postal/app/log/

  requeuer:
    volumes:
      - /opt/postal/log/requeuer:/opt/postal/app/log/

  runner:
    volumes:
      - /opt/postal/log/runner:/opt/postal/app/log

As it is not recommended to run the docker as root and in order to not changing the original docker image, it is necessary to change log's folder/files ownership to the same uid running inside the container, otherwise container won't start and "Permission Denied" messages will be shown when running postal logs

Checking inside container:

postal@postal-test:~/app/log$ ls -l
total 4
-rw-r----- 1 postal postal    0 Oct  3 18:59 rails.log
-rw-r----- 1 postal postal 1185 Oct  3 20:16 smtp_server.log

postal@postal:~/app/log$ id postal
uid=999(postal) gid=999(postal) groups=999(postal)

So in the host should exist a user with the same uid (999) in order to set the ownership. In this case it doesn't matter if the user's name is not the same as the host. If the logs folders doesn't exists Docker will create them when running, but with user/group root. To avoid it, create them manually and set the permissions.

$ sudo mkdir -p /opt/postal/log/cron /opt/postal/log/requeuer /opt/postal/log/smtp /opt/postal/log/web /opt/postal/log/worker /opt/postal/log/runner
$ sudo chown -R 999:999 /opt/postal/log
$ sudo chmod -R 0700 /opt/postal/log

Restart Postal and check all services has started.

$ sudo postal stop
$ sudo postal start
$ sudo postal status
NAME                COMMAND                  SERVICE             STATUS              PORTS
postal-cron-1       "/docker-entrypoint.…"   cron                running             
postal-requeuer-1   "/docker-entrypoint.…"   requeuer            running             
postal-smtp-1       "/docker-entrypoint.…"   smtp                running             
postal-web-1        "/docker-entrypoint.…"   web                 running             
postal-worker-1     "/docker-entrypoint.…"   worker              running

Fail2ban configuration

Add this at the end of /etc/fail2ban/jail.conf

[postal-smtp]
enabled = true
logpath = /opt/postal/log/smtp/smtp_server.log
bantime = 960
findtime = 960
maxretry = 3

Create a new file /etc/fail2ban/filter.d/postal-smtp.conf with these contents:

[Definition]
failregex = WARN: AUTH failure for ::ffff:<HOST>

Reload fail2ban to apply new configuration and check:

$ sudo fail2ban-server reload
OK  

$ sudofail2ban-server status
Status
|- Number of jail:	2
`- Jail list:	postal-smtp, sshd

Logrotate config

Create new file /etc/logrotate.d/postal:

/opt/postal/log/*/*.log {
    weekly
    rotate 8
    compress
    notifempty
    copytruncate
    delaycompress
    missingok
    create 600 root root
}

References

https://github.com/postalserver/postal
https://www.fail2ban.org
postalserver/postal#2166
postalserver/postal#1187
postalserver/postal#1639
https://www.the-lazy-dev.com/en/install-fail2ban-with-docker/
https://techflare.blog/permission-problems-in-bind-mount-in-docker-volume/