Braindeath in the Navy

[Philip Prindeville <ph...@redfish-solutions.com>]

Well, I tried to contact some people responsible for
the servers below that what they were doing was broken,
including citing chapter and verse where in RFC-2822 in
syntax of the Received: lines was spec'd out:

Received: from Gate2-sandiego.nmci.navy.mil (gate2-sandiego.nmci.navy.mil [138.163.0.42])
	by mail.redfish-solutions.com (8.13.8/8.13.7) with ESMTP id kAGNLZHp020689
	for <ph...@redfish-solutions.com>; Thu, 16 Nov 2006 16:21:40 -0700
Received: from nawesdnims03.nmci.navy.mil by Gate2-sandiego.nmci.navy.mil
          via smtpd (for mail.redfish-solutions.com [71.36.29.88]) with ESMTP; Thu, 16 Nov 2006 23:21:40 +0000
Received: (private information removed)
Received: (private information removed)
Received: (private information removed)
Received: (private information removed)
Received: (private information removed)

and which fields it requires (like the semi-colon followed by the
timestamp coming after a comment field) [cf: RFC 2822, section 3.6.7:

received        =       "Received:" name-val-list ";" date-time CRLF

name-val-list   =       [CFWS <http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2822#ref-CFWS>] [name-val-pair *(CFWS name-val-pair)]

including the definition of CFWS in 3.2.3.]

It just boggles my mind why anyone would go through that much trouble
to deliberately damage a header line, rather than just delete it.

Well, maybe they'll get a whiff of the errs of their ways in the
Hall of Spam Shame...

-Philip

Re: Braindeath in the Navy

[Joe Flowers <fl...@social.chass.ncsu.edu>]

Yep, a problem I continually get is that people want to make email into 
something that it is not.
It's not a credit card or an ATM card or Driver's license or a Visa or etc.

Joe


jay plesset wrote:
> It never fails to amaze me now many mail server admins ask for ways to 
> break the RFC's in the interest of "security".  I do tech support on 
> mail servers, and get requests to configure out server for this kind 
> of thing weekly. . .
>
> jay

Re: Braindeath in the Navy

[jay plesset <ja...@dp-design.com>]

It never fails to amaze me now many mail server admins ask for ways to 
break the RFC's in the interest of "security".  I do tech support on 
mail servers, and get requests to configure out server for this kind of 
thing weekly. . .

jay

Philip Prindeville wrote:

>Well, I tried to contact some people responsible for
>the servers below that what they were doing was broken,
>including citing chapter and verse where in RFC-2822 in
>syntax of the Received: lines was spec'd out:
>
>Received: from Gate2-sandiego.nmci.navy.mil (gate2-sandiego.nmci.navy.mil [138.163.0.42])
>	by mail.redfish-solutions.com (8.13.8/8.13.7) with ESMTP id kAGNLZHp020689
>	for <ph...@redfish-solutions.com>; Thu, 16 Nov 2006 16:21:40 -0700
>Received: from nawesdnims03.nmci.navy.mil by Gate2-sandiego.nmci.navy.mil
>          via smtpd (for mail.redfish-solutions.com [71.36.29.88]) with ESMTP; Thu, 16 Nov 2006 23:21:40 +0000
>Received: (private information removed)
>Received: (private information removed)
>Received: (private information removed)
>Received: (private information removed)
>Received: (private information removed)
>
>and which fields it requires (like the semi-colon followed by the
>timestamp coming after a comment field) [cf: RFC 2822, section 3.6.7:
>
>received        =       "Received:" name-val-list ";" date-time CRLF
>
>name-val-list   =       [CFWS <http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2822#ref-CFWS>] [name-val-pair *(CFWS name-val-pair)]
>
>including the definition of CFWS in 3.2.3.]
>
>It just boggles my mind why anyone would go through that much trouble
>to deliberately damage a header line, rather than just delete it.
>
>Well, maybe they'll get a whiff of the errs of their ways in the
>Hall of Spam Shame...
>
>-Philip
>
>
>  
>

Re: Braindeath in the Navy

[Matt Kettler <mk...@verizon.net>]

Philip Prindeville wrote:
> Well, I tried to contact some people responsible for
> the servers below that what they were doing was broken,
> including citing chapter and verse where in RFC-2822 in
> syntax of the Received: lines was spec'd out:
>
>   
<snip>
> It just boggles my mind why anyone would go through that much trouble
> to deliberately damage a header line, rather than just delete it.
>
> Well, maybe they'll get a whiff of the errs of their ways in the
> Hall of Spam Shame...
>   

Maybe.. but you never know.. some idiot lawmaker may have passed a law
requiring that government organizations use that string whenever
censoring private information anywhere..

Once you're dealing with the military (or any government organization)
you can definitely have situations of compound stupidity.. Stupid law,
interpreted stupidly by a high-ranking officer, with a stupid solution
planned by mid-ranking officers and performed stupidly by the
rank-and-file who can't make heads nor tails out of the nonsense they're
given.. :)

It's really amazing, but sometimes together people can collaborate to
create something dumber than any of them could have thought up alone.
And strict hierarchies of command tend to feed such developments.

Re: Braindeath in the Navy

[Philip Prindeville <ph...@redfish-solutions.com>]

Jonas Eckerman wrote:

>Philip Prindeville wrote:
>
>  
>
>>Received: (private information removed)
>>    
>>
>
>  
>
>>It just boggles my mind why anyone would go through that much trouble
>>to deliberately damage a header line, rather than just delete it.
>>    
>>
>
>The only reason I can think of for that (in this case) is that ther want to keep those headers in order for server hop counting to work.
>
>Of course, it would be much better (and more useful) if they kept the time stamp and obfuscated the headers without breaking the format. :-/
>
>/Jonas
>  
>

Sure.

They could replace it with either:

    Received (deleted); timestamp-here


and still be in complaince, or rewrite it:

    X-Header-Rewrite: Received-obfucated-for-no-obvious-purpose=3


Or any other number of imaginative yet-ultimately-misguided but
still-in-compliance-with-applicable-standards ways.

-Philip

Re: Braindeath in the Navy

[Jonas Eckerman <jo...@frukt.org>]

Philip Prindeville wrote:

> Received: (private information removed)

> It just boggles my mind why anyone would go through that much trouble
> to deliberately damage a header line, rather than just delete it.

The only reason I can think of for that (in this case) is that ther want to keep those headers in order for server hop counting to work.

Of course, it would be much better (and more useful) if they kept the time stamp and obfuscated the headers without breaking the format. :-/

/Jonas
-- 
Jonas Eckerman, FSDB & Fruktträdet
http://whatever.frukt.org/
http://www.fsdb.org/
http://www.frukt.org/