fitz@wang.com (Tom Fitzgerald) (12/12/90)
I found a neat way to embarrass myself. My boss received a mailmessage and forwarded it to me, and I replied to it. Elm informed me that it was sending the reply to my boss. But it didn't, it sent the reply to the person who had sent the original message. Do you see the possibility for problems in this situation? The configuration is SCO Unix, with MMDF as a mailer, Elm set up to use MMDF-format mailboxes. Elm is PL8. Boring details follow. My boss, myboss@wang.com got the original message from person1@office.wang.com, and saved it to a folder. Since Elm's set up to use MMDF format files, the folder began with the standard: ^A^A^A^A From office.wang.com!person1 <timestamp> From: person1@office.wang.com (Original Sender) Subject: Original Subject To: myboss@wang.com etc... (For the uninitiated, MMDF uses the string of ^As as a message separator.) Boss forwarded it by piping it into mail: "mail -s 'Subject' fitz < folder" When it showed up in my mailbox, the first ^A had been replaced by a space (I don't know by whom) but the other ^As were intact, and the message looked like: ^A^A^A^A From elf.wang.com!myboss <timestamp> From: myboss@wang.com (Fitz's Boss) X-Mailer: SCO System V Mail (version 3.2) To: fitz Subject: Subject ^A^A^A From office.wang.com!person1 <timestamp> From: person1@office.wang.com (Original Sender) Subject: Original Subject To: myboss@wang.com etc... (It starts getting interesting now). When I replied to it, Elm showed me the "To: Fitz's Boss" on the right while it was prompting me for the subject. When I sent it, person1 got it instead. The message Elm sent had in its header: To: person1@office.wang.com (Fitz's Boss) which is the most intriguing part - it combined the fullname from the real header with an address found only in the body of the message, and made the result the destination of the reply. Elm definitely built it that way because I went through the same procedure and looked at the outgoing message headers, and that's what the header screen showed. I haven't had time to look at the code, and may not for a while; if anyone has any ideas, I'd be curious. --- Tom Fitzgerald Wang Labs fitz@wang.com 1-508-967-5278 Lowell MA, USA ...!uunet!wang!fitz
syd@DSI.COM (Syd Weinstein) (12/12/90)
fitz@wang.com (Tom Fitzgerald) writes: >I found a neat way to embarrass myself. My boss received a mailmessage and >forwarded it to me, and I replied to it. Elm informed me that it was >sending the reply to my boss. But it didn't, it sent the reply to the >person who had sent the original message. This has already been fixed. What happened was that you told Elm to trust Reply-To and From: headers. However, a but made it not find the end of the envelop correctly in all cases, such as yours when the first line of the message started with a blank. (If that ^A hadn't been turned into a blank you would have been ok). The fix was in patch 9. -- ===================================================================== Sydney S. Weinstein, CDP, CCP Elm Coordinator Datacomp Systems, Inc. Voice: (215) 947-9900 syd@DSI.COM or dsinc!syd FAX: (215) 938-0235