[ale] testing firegpg with mailman

Michael H. Warfield mhw at WittsEnd.com
Sun Nov 29 00:13:22 EST 2009


Jim,

On Sat, 2009-11-28 at 23:00 -0500, Jim Kinney wrote:
> Fun!! your message came through just fine with good signature. I've
> also signed the reply (using FireGPG).

> I do have MailScanner on the ALE list incoming side. It is my
> understanding that the original message is supposed to be pristine
> unless there is a rule causing a disinfection to occur. Otherwise the
> mime is unpacked, scanned and discarded.

Wow...  I had to dig through archives going back to January of 2006 to
dig this one out.  There is a gotcha and it is a bloody weird one.
Granted that others have pointed out the header wrap problem (which
should NOT be a problem because these things are not suppose to be
affected by that - still noddling on that one).  The problem back then
was that many Mime aware applications would generate a line ending
sequence (protocol convention \r\n) encoded in quoted printable with
\r=0A where MimeTools would emit it as =0D=0A (equivalent) and that was
what was causing THAT problem.  Not sure if there is a base-64 encoding
equiv to that problem but anything in quoted printable can be expressed
as =hh for the byte and that causes a major indeterminancy.

The option that was causing the headaches in MailScanner was in
mailscanner.conf where the default was "Sign Clean Messages = yes".
That forced MailScanner to unpack all Mime messages and repack them in
order to add its "clean message" signature.

Check that setting and make damn sure it's "Sign Clean Messages = no".
Nobody EVER came back with the definitely way to insure that messages
were not corrupted in the "= yes" case and I had Julian and David (from
MimeTools) busting their asses trying to figure it out.

Mike

> On Sat, Nov 28, 2009 at 3:18 PM, Michael H. Warfield
> <mhw at wittsend.com> wrote:
>         Jim, 
>         
>         On Sat, 2009-11-28 at 14:23 -0500, Jim Kinney wrote:
>         > OK. So Mailman is (maybe) munging the gpg signature. Fixing
>         that will
>         > be a challenge if it's caused by signing the wrong sections
>         of the
>         > message body.
>         
>         
>         Something is not right here.  I run a mailman site supporting
>         several
>         dozen lists and multiple domains (IT-ISAC, ISAC Council, +++)
>         and I
>         don't see this problem.  We use gpg/pgp all the time on those
>         lists.
>         Furthermore, my own signatures through the ALE list seem to be
>         coming
>         through fine.
>         
>         Couple of years ago, I did run into a problem with MailScanner
>         which
>         Julian and I took a few days to shoot.  In that case,
>         MailScanner was
>         unpacking the mime and then repacking it (quoted printable in
>         that case,
>         I believe).  While the contents of the attachments remained
>         unaltered,
>         the encoding encapsulation changed (Mime is ambiguous on
>         several points
>         and something time MailTools or MimeTools will pack something
>         differently than will Evolution or Thunderbird).  We had to
>         stipulate
>         something in MailScanner where the message was passed
>         unmolested if
>         nothing was found untoward in it, rather than repacking it and
>         sending
>         it on.
>         
>         There are a couple of MailScanner Mime settings that could
>         impact this
>         but I seriously doubt it.
>         
>         Try this for a test.  Send a message back to me and to the
>         list.  Just a
>         Reply-All should do just fine.  I can do a byte for bye,
>         attachment for
>         attachment comparison.  Make SURE <mhw at wittsend.com> is on the
>         cc list,
>         so I get a direct copy.  You should be able to verify my
>         signatures on
>         this message the same way.  Compare the results from the ALE
>         relay to
>         the direct message.
>         
>         Regards,
>         Mike 
>         
>         
>         > What is needed now is to test a gpg signature sent from a
>         plain text
>         > (NOT from firegpg) email through mailman. It needs to be
>         tested
>         > through both firegpg and regular text email (anyone got a
>         quick link
>         > to gpg with mutt?).
>         >
>         > I sent myself a test message from firegpg to myself and NOT
>         through
>         > mailman. firgpg then reported it as a good signature. That
>         leads me to
>         > think the issue _is_ with mailman.
>         >
>         > oh joy. criticizing a gnu codebase ....
>         >
>         > On Sat, Nov 28, 2009 at 12:41 PM, Jeremy T. Bouse
>         > <jeremy.bouse at undergrid.net> wrote:
>         >         jim.kinney at gmail.com wrote:
>         >
>         >         > This is a simple test of firegpg running on Fedora
>         >         12/Firefox 3.5.5
>         >         >
>         >         > Please reply with good or bad signature status.
>         >         >
>         >
>         >
>         >         gpg command line and output:
>         >         /usr/bin/gpg
>         >         gpg: Signature made Sat 28 Nov 2009 11:04:06 AM EST
>         using RSA
>         >         key ID
>         >         6A87D3C5
>         >         gpg: BAD signature from "James P. Kinney III
>         (Physicist,
>         >         Brewer, Dad)
>         >         <jimkinney at gmail.com>"
>         >
>         >
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>         >
>         >
>         >
>         > --
>         > --
>         > James P. Kinney III
>         > Actively in pursuit of Life, Liberty and Happiness
>         >
>         > _______________________________________________
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>         --
>         
>         Michael H. Warfield (AI4NB) | (770) 985-6132 |
>          mhw at WittsEnd.com
>           /\/\|=mhw=|\/\/          | (678) 463-0932 |
>          http://www.wittsend.com/mhw/
>           NIC whois: MHW9          | An optimist believes we live in
>         the best of all
>          PGP Key: 0x674627FF        | possible worlds.  A pessimist is
>         sure of it! 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> -- 
> James P. Kinney III
> Actively in pursuit of Life, Liberty and Happiness         

-- 
Michael H. Warfield (AI4NB) | (770) 985-6132 |  mhw at WittsEnd.com
   /\/\|=mhw=|\/\/          | (678) 463-0932 |  http://www.wittsend.com/mhw/
   NIC whois: MHW9          | An optimist believes we live in the best of all
 PGP Key: 0x674627FF        | possible worlds.  A pessimist is sure of it!
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