SMTP Server: How Do I Unblock A Blacklisted IP Address?

My mailserver got into the list of blacklisted IPs when hacker took over my mailserver. It was routing 100 mails per min over the weekend. By the time i got it patched up and back on the net i could not send mails to Yahoo and some other porpular mailservers. Please how can i remove the Ip address from the list of blacklisted IPs?

thanks alexis i will do just that

Good question.

If you're running sendmail, you need to move to qmail, for the high security it provides by default.  You must configure the server such that no relaying is possible for unauthorized sites.

Getting out of spam lists is not trivial.  You're better off just getting a new ip.  Yahoo for example will call you up and ask you a very long list of questions.  You'll need your mail server log for that period when the incident occured. 

Let us know how it goes.

Well - it always depends on the business case in which you are running your email server for - it is a company with a few users? or are you running a server serving over 500 active users like myself?

Qmail is rock solid, secure and more stable than sendmail but you can lock sendmail down pretty well if you have the time and you are willing to learn. Qmail is designed to run in environments that have alot of users i.e gmail and yahoo runs qmail.

You can try out postfix or exim or if you are not too comfortable with unix. You can use Hmail Server - it's a free windows opensource email server - I will advise you run it if your email server connects to your main pop server and pull your emails. You can run it as an external mail server but you know how windows is. I have ran it on a public IP before but I locked down the server like mad and checked it every single day - the wahala was just too much.