[Mimedefang] message/partial

[Aleksandar Milivojevic]

Rolf wrote:
> what is the security risk with message/partial?
> 
> Sending 7 emails each with a picture attachment doesn't seem to me to be 
> an issue per se, so I presume that their mail client might have split it 
> up. Any clients known to do this? Workarounds?

If the email is JPEG image, as in your case, there's no harm.  However, 
if the email contains virus, and it is sent as message/partial, it can't 
be detected by virus scanners.  Theoreticall, each mail could contain 
only one byte of the actuall virus code.  There's no way for virus 
scanners to scan such an email.  Most commercial anti-virus tools will 
block message/partial by default also.  None that I know of will attempt 
to reassemble the email.

There are handfull of mail clients that support the feature.  One of 
them is MS Outlook Express.  In preferences you can set that messages 
exceeding certain size should be split up.  In that case, Outlook 
Express will generate message/partial.

-- 
Aleksandar Milivojevic <amilivojevic at pbl.ca>    Pollard Banknote Limited
Systems Administrator                           1499 Buffalo Place
Tel: (204) 474-2323 ext 276                     Winnipeg, MB  R3T 1L7