Juno's SMTP CRAM-MD5 AUTH appears to be broken, is there a way to force PLAIN SMTP authentication?

1

NOTE: this is not a problem with eM Client but with the Juno SMTP server I am using.  I would like to use the eM client but I can’t get it to work with Juno and I don’t want to switch to another service provider.

I have been unable to send mail using Juno’s email server, kept getting “Authenticate failure” using the same credentials as POP3 (which is working).

There appears to be a problem with Juno’s CRAM-MD5 authentication. 

Here’s the Python session which demonstrates the problem and a hack to Authenticate using another method which works:

>>> import smtplib
>>> s = smtplib.SMTP_SSL(‘smtp.juno.com’, 465)
>>> s.ehlo()
(250, ‘smtpout04.dca.untd.com Hello cpe-76-187-211-247.tx.res.rr.com pleased to meet you\nSIZE\n8BITMIME\nAUTH LOGIN PLAIN CRAM-MD5\nHELP’)

>>> s.login(‘MY_LOGIN’, ‘MY PASSWORD’)

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File “”, line 1, in
s.login(‘MY_LOGIN’, ‘MY PASSWORD’)
File “C:\Python27\lib\smtplib.py”, line 623, in login
raise SMTPAuthenticationError(code, resp)
SMTPAuthenticationError: (535, ‘smtpout04.dca.untd.com Authentication failed’)

>>> s.esmtp_features[‘auth’] = ‘PLAIN LOGIN’

>>> s.login(‘MY_LOGIN’, ‘MY PASSWORD’)
(235, ‘smtpout04.dca.untd.com auth ok, go ahead’)





2

You could try different ports for SMTP. The port and security policy combination are specific, so try the following combinations:

Port 587 = Force usage of SSL/TLS

Port 25 = Use SSL/TLS if available

Port 465 = Use SSL/TLS on special port (legacy)

Otherwise there is nothing you can change in eM Client. Best would be to fix the server.

3

Thanx Gary, I was hoping for a way to select the authentication method, similar to the account setup used by Thunderbird (my current email client).  I was really hoping I could em client to work, but alas I’m giving up.
I did contact Juno but don’t expect much help as their service is ancient!  Thanx again.

4

Juno should either implement CRAM-MD5 or remove it from their server’s response options.

You can see what authentication methods the Juno server offered from your log above: nAUTH LOGIN PLAIN CRAM-MD5. So when eM Client connected, it would have chosen the most secure option from what is offered:  CRAM-MD5. That is automatic and it is not possible to manually change to a less secure one like you can with Thunderbird. 

So your server reported that CRAM-MD5 can be used, and eM Client sent the encrypted password, but because this server is misconfigured and actually doesn’t support CRAM-MD5, the encrypted password is rejected.