Xref: utzoo news.admin:4162 news.sysadmin:1801 comp.mail.uucp:2445 Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!rutgers!ucsd!brian From: brian@ucsd.EDU (Brian Kantor) Newsgroups: news.admin,news.sysadmin,comp.mail.uucp Subject: Re: Dangerous hole in Usenet! Message-ID: <1296@ucsd.EDU> Date: 3 Dec 88 19:07:19 GMT References: <1227@vsi1.UUCP> <871@acer.stl.stc.co.uk> <944@dlhpedg.co.uk> Reply-To: brian@ucsd.edu (Brian Kantor) Organization: The Avant-Garde of the Now, Ltd. Lines: 32 >In article <871@acer.stl.stc.co.uk> dww@acer.UUCP (David Wright) writes: >... All three bounced from either ames ... Ames is one of our uucp neighbors; we see a lot of bounces from them. But it isn't their fault! Nearly every one of the bounced messages turns out to be a reply to mail that passed through host 'pacbell' before it got to ames. 'pacbell' doesn't add its sitename to the "From:" line in mail, but does add it to the "From " line. Berkeley mail (/usr/ucb/mail) uses the "From:" line to generate the address when replying to mail, so what happens is something like this: Message arrives as From ames!pacbell!hoptoad!gnu From: ames!hoptoad!gnu To: irrelevant and when you reply to it with Berkeley mail, your response gets mailed to To: ames!hoptoad!gnu which probably won't get there. The system administrator at host 'pacbell' claims he's doing the right thing. I think he's wrong. There it stands. I'm told this same problem occurs with lots of other BSD cum SysV mail paths. I know I've seen it elsewhere. There is no quick fix. You have been warned. Brian Kantor UCSD Postmaster UCSD Office of Academic Computing (619) 534-6865 UCSD B-028, La Jolla, CA 92093 USA brian@ucsd.edu BRIAN@UCSD ucsd!brian