At 1:43 PM -0800 2005-02-22, Allen Watson wrote:
It really would be so much better if there were a simple setting to reject ALL messages with attachments, as some other mailing list software provides. It can't be so difficult...
Actually, yes it is. MIME bodypart types come in pairs, and there are an unlimited number of potential combinations of these pairs. Moreover, there are also a variety of other attachment/encoding techniques (uuencode, binhex, etc...) which do not depend on MIME at all, and in fact would look to the program just like normal ASCII text. Indeed, the entire purpose of many of these alternative encoding techniques was to be able to survive being transmitted via 7-bit ASCII-only transmission networks, such as can be provided by e-mail.
And don't get me started on steganography.
Given that there are an unlimited number of possible encoding techniques, it is physically impossible to block them all.
This is why Mailman provides the tools that it does, and it allows you to choose to either filter out the stuff you know to be bad (allowing through everything else), or to allow through only the stuff you know to be good (filtering everything else).
This problem is much more complex than you give it credit for. Do Internet e-mail systems administration for a decade or two, and you'll find that there are all sorts of bizarre things out there that you never thought could possibly exist.
Mailman can only deal with those things that it knows about, and we've given you powerful tools that will help you solve most of the problems, if you use them correctly.
-- Brad Knowles, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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