ietf-822
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Re: Malformed header - what would you do?

2005-07-15 17:06:18

Paul Smith wrote:
 
on the second "14/7/2005 11:27:42.567" timestamped line,
there's a tab character (and nothing else) on the line.
 
Our software treats that line as a continuation of the
'X-SPAM-STATUS' line, but Outlook Express treats it as
the end of the message header.

OE does it wrong, the mail header ends with ...<CRLF>CRLF>

our software is adding something to the end of the
message header, and Outlook Express (and possibly other
email clients) are seeing our extra header as being
added to the start of the message text rather than at
the end of the header.

You could silently replace ...<CRLF><HT><CRLF> by ...<CRLF>
after you talked to your legal department.  It could have
all kinds of funny effects like breaking header signatures.

Another idea, because you already discussed with your legal
department that you manipulate the mail at all, insert your
stuff before the offending header field.

Part of me says that we should make our software send a
25kV surge down the line to fry the computer which was
adding the superfluous tab character,

That's another idea, or how about frying Redmond ? <gd&r>

Is our software wrong?

No.

Is the software adding the 'X-SPAM-STATUS' line wrong

Not really, 2822 says about CFWS:

| However, where CFWS occurs in this standard, it MUST NOT
| be inserted in such a way that any line of a folded header
| field is made up entirely of WSP characters and nothing
| else.

That's only about 2822-header fields, and not about the
obscure X-SPAM-STATUS.
                       Bye, Frank