Fix SMTP sending forcing implicit TLS regardless of port

cfg.use_tls was passed straight through as aiosmtplib's use_tls kwarg,
which means implicit TLS -- encrypted from the first byte, port 465's
convention. Port 587, what most providers (including the one that
surfaced this: DreamHost) document as their primary submission port,
needs STARTTLS instead -- a plaintext connection that upgrades in-band.
Forcing implicit TLS against a STARTTLS-only port breaks the handshake
outright: [SSL: WRONG_VERSION_NUMBER], a client TLS ClientHello sent to a
server still expecting a plaintext SMTP greeting.

The "Use TLS" checkbox still means "encrypt this connection" -- the fix
infers which of the two negotiation modes to use from the port (465 ->
implicit, everything else -> STARTTLS), matching the convention every
mail client uses. start_tls is passed as an explicit requirement rather
than left to aiosmtplib's opportunistic default, so a server that turns
out not to support STARTTLS fails loudly instead of silently sending in
plaintext despite the admin asking for encryption.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
This commit is contained in:
2026-08-15 23:09:39 -06:00
co-authored by Claude Sonnet 5
parent 630b07d48f
commit 691f597597
2 changed files with 106 additions and 1 deletions
+21 -1
View File
@@ -25,13 +25,33 @@ async def _deliver(cfg: SmtpSettings, to_address: str, subject: str, body: str)
message.set_content(body)
password = decrypt(cfg.password_encrypted) if cfg.password_encrypted else None
# "Use TLS" means "encrypt this connection", but SMTP has two genuinely
# different ways to do that, and picking the wrong one breaks the
# handshake outright rather than just failing to encrypt -- aiosmtplib's
# own `use_tls` param means *implicit* TLS (encrypted from the first
# byte, port 465's convention); attempting that against a STARTTLS-only
# port produces exactly `[SSL: WRONG_VERSION_NUMBER]` (a client TLS
# ClientHello sent to a server still expecting a plaintext SMTP
# greeting). So the actual negotiation mode has to be inferred from the
# port, matching the convention every mail client uses: 465 is implicit
# TLS, everything else (587, 25, ...) is STARTTLS (plaintext connection,
# then upgrade). `start_tls=True` (rather than leaving it to
# aiosmtplib's opportunistic default) makes the requirement strict --
# if the server doesn't actually support STARTTLS, this fails loudly
# instead of silently sending in plaintext despite the admin asking for
# encryption.
use_implicit_tls = cfg.use_tls and cfg.port == 465
require_starttls = cfg.use_tls and cfg.port != 465
await aiosmtplib.send(
message,
hostname=cfg.host,
port=cfg.port,
username=cfg.username or None,
password=password,
use_tls=cfg.use_tls,
use_tls=use_implicit_tls,
start_tls=require_starttls,
)