On 09-Jun-01 Nash Hoogwater wrote:
Hi list,
I got some very strange mail a few minutes ago and a week ago also. Maybe someone can help me with this.
The mail doesn't contain a reply-adres, subject and almost no headers. The date is 1 january 1970 00:59:59. I have pasted the headers and text below. The text is also very strange as you can see.
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Content-Type: Status: R X-Status: N
1 3b13ce2000000001 2 3b13ce2000000002
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Really a strange one... Please state your kernel version, MTA (e. g. sendmail, with version number) and SuSE-release of your box and wether you use it in a production/business environment (with a 'real' IP) or at home with dyn.IP and modem/isdn/dsl/cable/whatever.
Someone??? Any idea???
Normally, messages with headers like the ones which worry you are incomplete and would be rejected by any MTA following the rules for electronic mail as given in rfc822 and rfc1123. To be precise, they (the headers) would be completed with at least one received line (from your own host), date and Message-ID, together with other headers which might be assigned in your MTA's configuration. However, newer version of sendmail (V8) would not accept mails without a from: line in standard configuration ("need MAIL before RCPT"). That's why you should make sure that you have gotten the *whole* header and not just the body and parts of (optional) header lines; AFAIK, Status: and X-Status: are no mandatory header entries and therefore are treated like being part of the message body, as it would be with any subject: lines which are helpfull for the recipient but also not mandatory. Some mail programs do not show you the whole of the header. In this case it's best to directly cut and paste the problem mail out of the spool file. My first guess would point in the direction of a slightly misconfigured MTA on your side, together with a remote script/bot directly sending mails by connecting to your host, port 25, or a strictly local problem on your host... Just a guess...
Greetings,
Nash
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Boris Lorenz