{"id":5951,"date":"2025-02-27T18:29:37","date_gmt":"2025-02-28T00:29:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.incredigeek.com\/home\/?p=5951"},"modified":"2025-02-27T18:29:37","modified_gmt":"2025-02-28T00:29:37","slug":"email-account-sending-out-spam-while-suspended-cpanel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.incredigeek.com\/home\/email-account-sending-out-spam-while-suspended-cpanel\/","title":{"rendered":"Email Account Sending out spam while Suspended &#8211; cPanel"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When you suspend an account in cPanel, the users password, in &#8220;\/home\/ACCOUNT\/etc\/DOMAIN.com\/shadow&#8221;, gets two exclamation marks prepended to the password hash.  This means that the hash of a password from a user trying to login will not match what is in the shadow file effectively blocking the login.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.incredigeek.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/image-4.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"542\" height=\"213\" src=\"https:\/\/www.incredigeek.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/image-4.png\" alt=\"Screenshot showing cPanel email account suspended.\" class=\"wp-image-5954\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.incredigeek.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/image-4.png 542w, https:\/\/www.incredigeek.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/image-4-300x118.png 300w, https:\/\/www.incredigeek.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/image-4-500x196.png 500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 542px) 100vw, 542px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>However, there is an option that allows an admin to sign into all email accounts for a domain.  The option is in WHM  and called &#8220;Mail authentication via domain owner password&#8221;. It is under &#8220;Tweak Settings -> Mail&#8221;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.incredigeek.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/image-2.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"329\" src=\"https:\/\/www.incredigeek.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/image-2-1024x329.png\" alt=\"Screenshot showing Mail authentication via domain owner password setting.\" class=\"wp-image-5952\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.incredigeek.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/image-2-1024x329.png 1024w, https:\/\/www.incredigeek.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/image-2-300x96.png 300w, https:\/\/www.incredigeek.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/image-2-768x246.png 768w, https:\/\/www.incredigeek.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/image-2-1536x493.png 1536w, https:\/\/www.incredigeek.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/image-2-500x160.png 500w, https:\/\/www.incredigeek.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/image-2.png 1642w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>If this option is enabled, then the admin, or an attacker that has compromised the admin password, can continue to login and send mail as a user.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A lot of email spam attacks appear to be automated.  So if the admin password was weak and some hacker is using it to send spam, there is a good chance they don&#8217;t know it is the admin password.  They just want to send out emails.  Update the admin password, check and make sure the system is secure and monitor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When you suspend an account in cPanel, the users password, in &#8220;\/home\/ACCOUNT\/etc\/DOMAIN.com\/shadow&#8221;, gets two exclamation marks prepended to the password hash. This means that the hash of a password from a user trying to login will not match what is &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.incredigeek.com\/home\/email-account-sending-out-spam-while-suspended-cpanel\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[195,573],"tags":[196,223,503,1472,446,382],"class_list":["post-5951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cpanel","category-security","tag-cpanel-2","tag-email","tag-security","tag-smtp","tag-spam","tag-whm"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.incredigeek.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.incredigeek.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.incredigeek.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.incredigeek.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.incredigeek.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5951"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.incredigeek.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5951\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5955,"href":"https:\/\/www.incredigeek.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5951\/revisions\/5955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.incredigeek.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.incredigeek.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.incredigeek.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}