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