Bugtraq mailing list archives

Re: A (possibly) better way to get input integrity


From: perry () imsi com (Perry E. Metzger)
Date: Sun, 26 Feb 1995 13:12:53 -0500


der Mouse says:
Since when do we have email addresses with `|;{(*&'?, return and
newline in them?  For that matter, why should we allow for inputs
with 8-bit bytes, ^D, ^Z, or other control, meta, or escape
characters.  These are not legitimate email address components and
should not be permitted for this purpose.

I disagree about some of those.  High-half characters (128-255), which
is presumably what you mean by "8-bit bytes", are necessary if you are
to be taken seriously outside the USA.

RFC 822 doesn't permit these characters in addresses (or elsewhere in
the text.) The MIME standards define clean ways to embed eight (and
more!) bit character sets into mail headers, so this isn't really a
problem. I suggest that conservatism in this is quite reasonable.

Perry



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