Can't you just send the message without auth? Most likely the admins restrict access to this server only to internal addresses so authentication may not be required? IOW, since there's no outside traffic allowed no authentication is required to access SMTP?

If the schemes are missing on the AUTH line you're definitely not going to be able to login - the client won't know how to send auth information (although the default for SMTP is base64 which is something you can try).

+++ Rick ---

>Have run into an odd situation at a customer site using Exchange. Sometime between the 28th of Sept and the 1st of October, something changed in the configuration that caused our software to not be able to send E-mail via SMTP. Looking over information sent by the server, it appears that AUTH has no authentication type available enabled. In response to "EHLO" I get the following (note: I've edited the welcome banner to replace server name with a fictitious name):
>
>250-widget Hello [123.123.123.123]
>250-SIZE 10485760
>250-PIPELINING
>250-DSN
>250-ENHANCEDSTATUSCODES
>250-AUTH
>250-8BITMIME
>250-BINARYMIME
>250 CHUNKING
>
>Notice how the AUTH command doesn't have any authentication mechanism listed. Obviously this means that "AUTH LOGIN" won't work -- it results in "504 5.7.4 Unrecognized authentication type" as the response.
>
>Of course, trying to "outsmart" the server by simply using SMTP and connecting via "HELO" results in message indicating that authentication is required.
>
>The last time it was working the welcome banner when you connect to the server was:
>220 widgetronix.com Microsoft ESMTP MAIL Service, Version: 6.0.3790.3959 ready at Tue, 29 Sep 2009
>
>and after using EHLO command I used to get:
>
>250-widget Hello [123.123.123.123]
>250-TURN
>250-SIZE
>250-ETRN
>250-PIPELINING
>250-DSN
>250-ENHANCEDSTATUSCODES
>250-8bitmime
>250-BINARYMIME
>250-CHUNKING
>250-VRFY
>250-X-EXPS GSSAPI NTLM LOGIN
>250-X-EXPS=LOGIN
>250-AUTH GSSAPI NTLM LOGIN
>250-AUTH=LOGIN
>250-X-LINK2STATE
>250-XEXCH50
>250 OK
>
>After some change, the following was the banner:
>220 widgetronix.com Microsoft ESMTP MAIL Service ready at Thu, 1 Oct 2009 12:57:27 -0400
>
>and after EHLO I would get:
>250-widget Hello [123.123.123.123]
>250-SIZE 10485760
>250-PIPELINING
>250-DSN
>250-ENHANCEDSTATUSCODES
>250-AUTH
>250-8BITMIME
>250-BINARYMIME
>250 CHUNKING
>
>Not only does the welcome banner appear different but the list of available options after using the EHLO command are different -- which would indicate to me that *something* has changed (and my best guess is that I'm talking to a completely different server). The customer however insists that they did *absolutely nothing* and that simply our software "stopped working". Does anybody know if there were any updates or securty patches to Exchange that would account for this? Does anytbody know the procedure to re-enable "AUTH LOGIN" (I don't have Exchange so I'm not sure about its operation)?