GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 204111
malformed signed attachments confuse evo
Last modified: 2013-09-10 14:02:36 UTC
I regularly correspond with a fellow using The Bat! (a win32 email client). The PGP plugin for said client occasionally inserts random non-printable characters into the message body when PGP signing. This is certainly a bug in his client - but it triggers an unpleasent behavior in Evo. Mutt displays the attachment inline (as the body) without complaint - evolution shows an "Unkown Attachment Type" with only save to disk available. Selecting Show Email Source allows the message to be read. If the assignee contacts me via email I can provide a sample of such a message.
can you get me one of these broken messages?
Subject: Re: Broken PGP signed message From: Jeffrey Stedfast <fejj@ximian.com> To: Dan Berger <dberger@ix.netcom.com> Date: 09 Jul 2001 19:38:28 -0400 Actually, it looks like the problem might actually have to do with the fact that the client that sent the attached message said that the message body was actually a file attachment with a content-type of application/pgp which evolution doesn't know how to handle. I'll see what I can do. Jeff
fixed in cvs, er, rather, about to be as soon as I commit ;-)
unfortunately the fix isn't quite right - it now displays application/pgp parts, but doesn't honor the format and x-action flags, meaning it isn't verifying signatures of these parts. I'll attach a sample email to this bug report.
Created attachment 40027 [details] sample email with signed application/pgp body (maildir file)
BTW: this misbehavior (still) occurs against .11
fixed in cvs
please note that The Bat! is 100% broken wrt to PGP. Tell your friend to get a REAL mailer or else just live with any brokenness.
Can you provide supporting documentation to support your statement? I.e. reference an RFC that it's violating. I'd be happy to provide this to my associate, who can provide it to the folks who wrote The Bat!. Without RFC citations, and given the fact that other PGP- capable mailers handle these messages correctly (mutt, positillion), its hard to support the assertation that Evo isn't broken.
sure, look at rfc2015 - first few paragraphs mention that application/pgp was a rejected proposed standard and that PGP/MIME has replaced it. It also mentions that the mime type application/pgp is no longer a valid mime type. ie, it was never passed - thus there is no rfc for it, thus The Bat! is broken, thus Evolution isn't, thus...more stuff.
Cool, thanks, I'll pass it on.
BTW: just got a PGP signed email from SANS (the Security Alert Consensus) - and it's application/pgp formatted. So it seems that The Bat! isn't the only broken client out there.