[ale] Mystery Spam

Wed Nov 19 09:24:28 EST 2003

I believe the line you are looking for is:
freebie:~ 401> perl -MMIME::Base64 -le 'print decode_base64( <> )'

Looks like it pretty much tells the client that it is a Base64 document.

-----Original Message-----
From: Jeff Hubbs [mailto:hbbs at comcast.net] 
Sent: Wednesday, November 19, 2003 9:13 AM
To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts
Subject: Re: [ale] Mystery Spam

On Wed, 2003-11-19 at 08:30, Fletch wrote:
> >>>>> "Jeff" == Jeff Hubbs <hbbs at comcast.net> writes:
> 
>     Jeff> Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
> 
> It's base64 encoded (a method for encoding binary data that might have
> to pass through somewhere that's not able to handle arbitrary 8bit
> data).
> 
> 
>     Jeff>
PGh0bWw+DQpUaGVzZSBhcmUgd2hhdCB0aGV5IGxvb2sgbGlrZSB0b2RheSA8YnI+DQp0aGV5IGFy
> 
> freebie:~ 401> perl -MMIME::Base64 -le 'print decode_base64( <> )' <<EOT
> heredoc>
PGh0bWw+DQpUaGVzZSBhcmUgd2hhdCB0aGV5IGxvb2sgbGlrZSB0b2RheSA8YnI+DQp0aGV5IGFy
> heredoc> EOT
> <html>
> These are what they look like today <br>
> they ar

Dang, Perl looks like fun.

I guess where my confusion lies is this:  How did Evolution know to
perform the base64 decode for that text?  Does it (and other mail
clients, I'd presume) look for some sort of characteristic "smell" in
its message text?

- Jeff

_______________________________________________
Ale mailing list
Ale at ale.org
http://www.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale