How to make Apache (2.2.4) less greedy, or Sendmail less polite? [semi-solved]

[Olaf Greve]

Hi again,

Tnx for your further recommendations. I'll take the following actions:

1) I'll report the IP addresses to Spamcop and Spamhaus (note that  
indeed it appears to be virus-driven, or operated through backdoors,  
as the server is under constant "attack", coming from a variety of IP  
addresses). That way, perhaps the ISPs can at least inform the  
"responsible" people that they have virus infections, and need to act  
upon it.
2) I may try the hosts.allow trick, but I fear that the IP addresses  
will be very diverse, so that may not be as full-proof as I'd like.  
Probably I'll make use of captcha, or something of the likes.
3) I had already tried using Apache to block any and all access to  
the script, but from the machine itself, but I had done so by adding  
an "Allow from 123.456.789.10" entry (with the real life IP address,  
instead of "localhost" or "127.0.0.1"). This didn't do the trick, and  
I can see why. I'll try this with setting this to "Allow from  
localhost" or "Allow from 127.0.0.1", and will the perhaps have to  
change the <form> action handler somewhat.

Either way: I should have enough information for now to properly act  
upon it (though I still welcome further suggestions), so thanks a lot  
again! :)

Cheers!
Olafo