[Mimedefang] MIME type message/partial

Dave O'Neill dmo at roaringpenguin.com
Tue Nov 9 12:56:02 EST 2004


Paul Murphy wrote:
> Jan-Pieter,
> 
> On my system, your message shows a header which contains:
> 
> X-message-flag: *** MICROSOFT OUTLOOK FATAL ERROR 15: PRESS ALT+F4 TO CONTINUE
> 
> This also appears in yellow in the Outlook session as a header section to the
> message viewer - is this part of your message, or something which my Outlook
> added?  Google has exactly one incidence of this header, in a mailing list for
> NNTP...

Outlook will display the contents of an X-Message-Flag: header in a 
coloured box above the message.  The sender can put whatever they want 
in this header.  It's been adopted by some to display joke warning 
messages like the one above, or comments like "Get yourself a real mail 
client at [some URL]", as special behaviour for this header is only 
supported by Outlook.

Some details can be found at
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?MicrosoftOutlookExpress
http://www.winnetmag.com/MicrosoftExchangeOutlook/Article/ArticleID/7694/7694.html
http://web.archive.org/web/20030602161609/http://www.rodos.net/outlook/

I'm surprised this hasn't been exploited by virus authors yet. Something 
like:
   X-message-flag:  Outlook has found no viruses in this message
would probably trick a lot of people.

Cheers,
Dave
-- 
Dave O'Neill <dmo at roaringpenguin.com>    Roaring Penguin Software Inc.
+1 (613) 231-6599 ext. 104               http://www.roaringpenguin.com/
For CanIt technical support, please mail: support at roaringpenguin.com



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