Re: [Pan-users] Re: clearing headers?

[Chris Metzler]

On Sat, 4 Oct 2008 08:15:06 -0700
Travis wrote:
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Chris Metzler" <address@hidden>
> To: <address@hidden>
> Sent: Saturday, October 04, 2008 05:24 AM
> Subject: Re: [Pan-users] Re: clearing headers?
> 
> 
> The body of your message came as an attachment so none of it is here in
> my reply.

Wow, I haven't run into someone with this bug in a while.

Well, I can't swear that the problem is yours; but based on years of
history, I would bet cash that what's going on is this:

My email was/is PGP-signed (I sign pretty much all my email), and by
choice, my security system makes the PGP signature an attachment,
rather than alphanumerically encoded and attached to the end of the
email text (a so-called "inline signature").  Since the email will
have attachments, that requires that the email be MIME-encoded; all
email messages with attachments are MIME-encoded.  Under the MIME
standard, the email is broken up into parts -- one part for the text,
one part for each attachment, etc.  The portion comprising the
text goes into its own component of the MIME-encoded message, with
headers indicating that it's text, to be handled differently from the
other (attachment) portions of the message.  The MIME standard is what
makes possible sending attachments/binary files/etc. as part of email
messages.  It's been an email encoding standard since 1996 (well, doing
it has been around longer than that; but it became an IETF standard
starting in 1996).

However, certain Microsoft products have had a series of really famous
bugs (you can google on them) in their handling of MIME-encoded email
messages (specifically, their handling of the "Content-disposition:"
header, or behavior in the absence of that header).  Outlook used to
have this problem as well, but they fixed it around 2001 or so in the
form of a plugin; later versions of Outlook were supposed to handle
MIME correctly without the use of a plugin.  Other Windows clients
not from Microsoft (e.g. Eudora, Thunderbird, etc.) have never had
this problem.

If the text portion of my email appears blank to you, and the text is
instead in an attachment that you have to manually open to read, then
I'd bet money the client you're using is a Microsoft product that still
has the famous bug.

Here's one discussion of this issue I stumbled upon after quick google:

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.security.pgp.tech/browse_thread/thread/c1cc2714f27e4e33


-c


-- 
Chris Metzler                   address@hidden
                (remove "snip-me." to email)

"As a child I understood how to give; I have forgotten this grace since I
have become civilized." - Chief Luther Standing Bear

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