[80890] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Underscores in host names
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu)
Tue May 17 21:32:27 2005
To: nanog@merit.edu
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 18 May 2005 11:08:03 +1000."
<200505180108.j4I1838V099518@drugs.dv.isc.org>
From: Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu
Date: Tue, 17 May 2005 21:31:36 -0400
Errors-To: owner-nanog@merit.edu
--==_Exmh_1116379896_5349P
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
In article <1116377042.592906.137650@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> you write:
>Hello all.
>We have a client containing an underscore in the email address domain
>name. Our email server rejects it because of it's violation of the RFC
>standard. This individuals claim is that he doesn't have problems
>anywhere else and if this is going to be a problem he's "going to take
>his business elsewhere"!
>
>I understand it's a violation of the standard, but does it pose a
>security hole to the email server to allow this sort of mail?
No *security* hole as such, other than you need to make sure that if you're
going to accept such cruft, you make *damned* sure that you never leak it
back out and have some *other* standard-conformant site get on *your* case
about it....
Oh, and make sure that none of *your* automated tools that summarize maillogs
and the like choke on it. And that your e-mail admin is using software that
doesn't choke on it (otherwise if they send you e-mail, you can't reply.. ;)
You may want to balance the costs of making sure that *all* your stuff is
underscore-ready (don't forget ongoing maintenance costs, as you'll probably
have to re-patch each new release of any tools) against what this customer is
willing to pay you.
--==_Exmh_1116379896_5349P
Content-Type: application/pgp-signature
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Exmh version 2.5 07/13/2001
iD8DBQFCipr4cC3lWbTT17ARAhv4AJ9rD88BLn7/FhlDRzhsefuCR0sSUwCfS0g2
ZxMLAg1hJ/w6OUzyii+O5/M=
=gzVx
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
--==_Exmh_1116379896_5349P--
