Re: [Pan-users] I have problems with some binary postings using yEnc

[Rhialto]

On Sun 03 Jan 2010 at 05:48:22 +0000, SciFi wrote:
> > Sender: address@hidden
> > Newsgroups: alt.binaries.chaka,alt.binaries.multimedia.teen-idols
> > Subject: Crazy Christmas Lights-2009-12-06-0.tp (0666/6746)
> > X-Newsposter: Yenc-Power-Post-GB-12 Beta 7  12.2.7.0 (Modified POWER-POST)
> > Organization: UseNetServer - www.usenetserver.com
> > X-Complaints-To: address@hidden
> > Message-ID: <gYV_m.478849$u%3.331243 at news.usenetserver.com>

changed "@" to " at ", also below.

> > Date: 31 Dec 2009 04:41:49 GMT
> > Lines: 1984
> > Bytes: 258116
> > Xref: number.nntp.dca.giganews.com 
> > alt.binaries.multimedia.teen-idols:42219634 alt.binaries.chaka:14263130

> Also, as far as what Pan sees, his Message-ID line is:
> "Message-ID: <gYV_m.478849$u%3.331243 at news.usenetserver.com>"
> where we ought to be getting the msg-id string as this:
> "gYV_m.478849$u%3.331243 at news.usenetserver.com"
> but instead we are getting a much-longer junk string as this:
> "gYV_m.478849$u%253.331243 at news.usenetserver.comsenetserver.comp 
> ^U%838%973235)"
> 
> I do not know where the extra stuff is coming from, e.g.
> past '.com' on-thru the close-parens ')' .

I notice there is a percent-sign in the message ID. Are we sure that the
ID is never used as a printf-like format anywhere by accident?

Another possibility is that the % is expanded to %25, and 0x25 is the
value of a % (in hex). So maybe some kind of escaping of "unusual"
characters is going on. Perhaps the function doing it doesn't handle the
case where the string gets longer for that reason, and the terminating
NUL character gets overwritten.

Pure speculation, without looking at any source.

-Olaf.
-- 
___ Olaf 'Rhialto' Seibert    -- You author it, and I'll reader it.
\X/ rhialto/at/xs4all.nl      -- Cetero censeo "authored" delendum esse.