Exchange 2007 / 2010 change the SMTP Banner

KB ID 0000327

Problem

If you want to shield the outside world from seeing what mail platform you are running, or even if you just want to deter the casual script kiddy who is trying to remote fingerprint a massive range of IP addresses. Changing the SMTP response banner is quite simple to do.

<emexchange welcome bannerpty>

Out of the box we know we are running a Microsoft mail platform

Solution

1. Open Exchange System Manager and find the name of your “Receive Connector” (Server Configuration > Hub Transport > Receive Connectors).

2.Open the “Exchange Management Shell” and issue the following powershell command,

Set-ReceiveConnector “name of the connector” -Banner “220 The text you want to display”

change exchange banner

3. Then your banner should be changed (you don’t need to restart anything).

change mail banner exchange

Changing the SMTP Banner for Exchange 2000 / 2003

1. Drop to command line and issue the following commands,

cd c:inetpubadminscripts
cscript adsutil.vbs set smtpsvc/vsi number/connectresponse “220 The text you want to display”

Note: c:inetpubadminscriptsadsutil path may be different in your Exchange server. And “vsi number” is the number of your SMTP virtual server, this is nearly always 1, check in your Exchange System Management console to make sure.

vsi number How to locate your VSI Number

2. Then restart the SMTP service.

Related Articles, References, Credits, or External Links

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Author: Migrated

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