GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 347471
X Protective Marking standard (Australian Government)
Last modified: 2007-03-03 15:58:08 UTC
Please provide support for the Australain Government's standard for adding a security classification (e.g. UNCLASSIFIED or COMMERCIAL-IN-CONFIDENCE) to emails as they are created and displaying these markings on received emails. The markings are implemeted in both the Subject field and as an X-Header. The standard and other documentation are here http://www.agimo.gov.au/publications/2005/october/protective_markings As support for this is mandatory in many Australian Government Agencies from March next year it is essential this is added to Evolution if you want Gnome based distributions to be adopted in the Australian Government.
would probably be a strategical decision, adding harish to CC. stephen, when *exactly* must it have been implemented? march 1st, 2007? gnome 2.18 and evolution 2.10 release are targetted to middle of march, that's why i ask.
The mandatory implementation date is the end of March 2007, but some agencies have already implimented the required filtering in their email gateways. Possibly the best approach is to do a partial implementation in Evolution 2.8 and the rest in 2.10. I guess the main issue is how much needs to be in Evolution and what can be done in a plugin. Stephen.
sankar, could this be done by writing an eplugin? do we have hooks for adding that by using an outgoing filter, and displaying that stuff in the preview pane (the X-Header should definitely be shown when the plugin is enabled)? thanks in advance for any updates (please keep the string freeze in february in mind).
On a first look, it seems like it can be achieved through a simple outgoing filter (to set the header) and a plugin (to display X-headers). I will go through the document mentioned and see if anything has to be done. Also, I have to take care that this should not lead to any vulnerability, like setting a malicious executable script. Targetting before end of January.
I went through the latest version of the document (Feb-2006) that I have got from Stephen Boyd. A few things to note are: - The possible list of various message priorities that can be set is not finite. So it has to be configurable. - Evolution has a similar feature implementation for GroupWise (Send-options) and such an implementation for the Exchange provider is also nearing completion. This is done through a composer hook-loader which can be used by any plugin-developer. - The plugin that will be developed will be a generic way of embedding a few X-Headers to the outgoing messages. The input dialog will be created based on reading the contents from an xml file. like: <item name="priority" header="X-Priority"> <value>High</value> <value>Low</value> <value>Normal</value> </item> - Evolution already has support for displaying custom headers. Goto Edit->Preference->Mail Preferences->Headers , Add Headers. - Generating such an XML file and adding the custome headers to the above mail-headers dialog is specific to the deployment and hence should be taken care by the people who deploy it. - This makes it configurable too. I will update the once the plugin is ready.
Been requested already : http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=201186
Comment 6 is correct, assuming support of the special Header is sufficient. Thus properly marking as a duplicate... *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 201186 ***
(In reply to comment #4) > On a first look, it seems like it can be achieved through a simple outgoing > filter (to set the header) and a plugin (to display X-headers). This can *not* be done by an outgoing filter. Outgoing filters do not get applied until after the message is successfully sent. The ability to display a custom header is available already, as has been pointed out in comment 5.
Stephen, please note that I marked this bug as a duplicate with an explicite assumption, that a special custom Header is suficient to meet the requirements. However, I had a quick glimpse at the docs -- and this assumption may or may not be true. You tell us. :) "Email Protective Marking Standard for the AG" states, that "The internet Message Header Extension SHOULD be used in preference to the Subject Field Marking." (section 2.5), and the examples in section 4.2.2 do show the header only, with no markings in the Subject. On the other hand, the "Implementation Guide" states in section 2.2, that "The protective marking must be included as part of the ‘Subject:’ line." I'm not a native English speaker, but I do understand these as different, conflicting requirements.
Hi Karsten, Your understanding of the documents is correct. The standard is the over-riding document. The long term plan is for X-headers to be the main method. If we only get the X-headers that will be fine for most implementations as their mail gateway should be able to add the Subject component. Is there any way to ensure that if one replies or forwards an email with an X-Protective-Marking header, that is used as the default for the new message? Stephen.
(In reply to comment #10) > Your understanding of the documents is correct. The standard is the > over-riding document. The long term plan is for X-headers to be the main > method. OK, thanks -- so the headers are actually sufficient according to the standard. (Franly, IMHO the Subject part is a bad idea anyway. ;) > Is there any way to ensure that if one replies or forwards an email with an > X-Protective-Marking header, that is used as the default for the new message? Hmm, that likely can be done in the plugin. However, this would be another requirement for the code, and not part of bug 201186, in which case the header must not be inherited.