GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 319356
moving mails alters the mail
Last modified: 2021-05-19 11:55:56 UTC
When moving a mail (tested with local folders), the mail itself is altered. This actually did not change the mails contents, but the MIME structure. Steps to reproduce: * Move a mail from a folder (Inbox here) to another folder (test here). Undelete the mail in Inbox. I used the "Welcome to Evolution!" mail from "25 June 2002 14:45:00 +0300". Proof of the mail being altered: $ pwd /home/guenther/.evolution/mail/local $ diff -u Inbox test --- Inbox 2005-10-20 22:53:06.000000000 +0200 +++ test 2005-10-20 22:53:03.000000000 +0200 @@ -22,7 +22,7 @@ X-Mailman-Version: 1.1 Status: X-Evolution-Source: pop://rupert@pop.ximian.com/inbox -X-Evolution: 00000ddd-0030 +X-Evolution: 00000004-0030 --=-t4dRE6cqcdSBHOrMdTQ1 @@ -336,4 +336,9 @@ wAMI8AACPIAADyDAAwjwAAI8gAAPIMADCPAAAjyAAA8gwAMI8AACPIAADyDAAwjwAAI8gAAPIMAD CPAAAjyAAA8gwAMIOL8fcegyqOBdwTkAAAAASUVORK5CYII= + --=-t4dRE6cqcdSBHOrMdTQ1 + + +--=-t4dRE6cqcdSBHOrMdTQ1-- + The X-Evolution change is fine, the latter is not. Setting Severity critical, as this changes the integrity of a document. Target Milestone at least 2.5.
Can you replicate it with others mails as well? I can't replicate it (I don't have welcome to evo mail right now.. I checked with others and no alteration).
the original welcome message seems malformed in that it isn't properly terminated with an end-boundary. that's probably why this got modified.
Vivek, dude, c'mon... ;-) Getting the welcome message is easy: $ su # adduser test # su test $ evolution Anyway, I actually can replicate with (almost?) all messages. Kind of different results, though. Just tested with a couple of messages generated by Evolution 2.0, 2.4, Outlook, Pegasus and Bugzilla. All of them where modiefied. Again, not the body, but the headers only. Some excerpts: -From bugzilla-daemon@bugzilla.gnome.org Fri Oct 21 16:38:14 2005 +From bugzilla-daemon@bugzilla.gnome.org Fri Oct 21 16:38:14 2005 -Content-Type: text/html; - charset="iso-8859-1" +Content-Type: text/html; charset="iso-8859-1" And all headers longer than about 80 chars are folded. I'm not sure about the impact of this. But IMHO the mail is aa document, that should not be changed at all. Possible bad sscenarios are signed messages (where the entire message is signed, including multiple MIME parts. Unfolding (see above) probably will invalidate the signature. Vivek: Replicating this is easy. Just be sure to collect the test mails using different tools than Evo, like your shell -- as the first copy inside Evo already will alter the mail. Note: I am using IMAP, mail delivery is done by fetchmail/procmail. This applies to all test mails above, but does not apply to the Evo Welcome message (of course).
Jeff, thanks. You are likely right. I didn't have a close look, but suspected exactly this -- the original mail being malformed. Anyway, IMHO if Evo can display the mail just fine, why alter the mail at all? Regardless how malformed it may be. It is a document in itself, that was created in a special way. If Evo changes this just to nicen up the raw mail or fix malformed parts, we are changing this document. This is not the original document any longer, no?
oh.. this is surely a duplicate of #235681.
there's nothing to worry about with signed parts because whenever the parser finds a multipart/signed, it treats the content as opaque. I'm not on the team anymore tho, so I'll leave it up to the new maintainers to decide if it's worth fixing or not. (personally I don't believe so, because message headers are not guaranteed to be treated opaquely - if this was a problem with the content, then I'd say "bug" but it's not)
Vivek: No, this is not a duplicate of bug #235681. There are some differences: * This bug is not about unfolding headers only. See my previous examples. There are other modifications done, even the "^From " line is changed. * The modification happens on *copying* the mail. The source mail is not modified. (Note, that the diffs are done against two Evo mbox files.) * Not correctly formed mails are "rewritten". If Evo can deal with it just fine, why change the document at all? (See the original report.) Jeff, thanks for the info. :) Re-setting Severity to normal.
Bug is reproducible only with the welcome mailof evolution not with any other mail. So imapct on user data seem to be very less. Set target to future.
GNOME is going to shut down bugzilla.gnome.org in favor of gitlab.gnome.org. As part of that, we are mass-closing older open tickets in bugzilla.gnome.org which have not seen updates for a longer time (resources are unfortunately quite limited so not every ticket can get handled). If you can still reproduce the situation described in this ticket in a recent and supported software version, then please follow https://wiki.gnome.org/Community/GettingInTouch/BugReportingGuidelines and create a new bug report ticket at https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/evolution/-/issues/ Thank you for your understanding and your help.