Bug 5797 - Received Blackberry Mail changed to random characters
Summary: Received Blackberry Mail changed to random characters
Status: RESOLVED INVALID
Alias: None
Product: Spamassassin
Classification: Unclassified
Component: spamassassin (show other bugs)
Version: 3.2.4
Hardware: PC OpenVMS
: P5 normal
Target Milestone: Undefined
Assignee: SpamAssassin Developer Mailing List
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2008-01-23 09:16 UTC by Mike Bradley
Modified: 2008-01-24 19:41 UTC (History)
0 users



Attachment Type Modified Status Actions Submitter/CLA Status
blackberry message example application/msword None Mike Bradley [NoCLA]
txt file of before and after SA text/plain None Mike Bradley [NoCLA]

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Description Mike Bradley 2008-01-23 09:16:13 UTC
When we receive mail from blackberry senders, it changes the mail body to 
random characters.
Comment 1 Mike Bradley 2008-01-23 09:19:44 UTC
Created attachment 4244 [details]
blackberry message example

This is an example of what mail from blackberry senders looks like.
Comment 2 Theo Van Dinter 2008-01-23 10:58:32 UTC
Hi,

IMO, it's unlikely this is an SA issue, since SA doesn't modify the message content, but ...  Can you upload 
a pre-SA message and post-SA message showing the problem, in text/plain format (4244 is a word doc)?
Comment 3 Mike Bradley 2008-01-23 11:31:18 UTC
Created attachment 4245 [details]
txt file of before and after SA

Here is a text version of the mail.  Of course we use outlook here to view
emails so some of the "characters" will not translate to ascci.  But, most of
the conversion is there (toward the bottom of the email).

I am not the only site using SA to experience this NEW problem.  Frugal
Brothers Software in Indiana is experiencing the same thing.  Just with
Blackberry mail though same as here.

Mike Bradley
Comment 4 Theo Van Dinter 2008-01-23 12:56:43 UTC
We need the original "as seen by SA" mails.  4245 looks like saved messages from the MUA which isn't 
useful.

Also, how are you calling SA?
Comment 5 Sidney Markowitz 2008-01-23 14:50:15 UTC
Here is how to get the full text of the email in a form that might help us, if
you are using Outlook:

1. Click on (highlight) the message title line (not the preview window).
2. Click on "File."
3. Click on "Properties."
4. Click the "Details" tab.

Copy and paste that into a text file and attach that to this bug report.

That still is unlikely to be enough information, but at least it will give us a
start at seeing what the problem really looks like. What we really need is the
raw source of the mail before SpamAssassin ever ses it, and right after
SpamAssassin has processed it. To get that information you will probably have to
talk to someone in your IT who understands how your mail server is set up to
receive mail and how it invokes SpamAssassin.

SpamAssassin does not process the mail all by itself. You have something that
receives mail, sends it through SpamAssassin, then sends the processed result on
to your mailbox. For example, if you have an Exchange server, you might be
running Exchange SpamAssassin Sink to process emails through SpamAssassin.

In order to be able to figure out if your problem is with SpamAssassin or has
something to do with the way you are processing mail to get it through
SpamAssassin we need to know what kind of mail server you are using and how it
is running SpamAssassin.

We also need to see what the Blackberry email looks like, with all of its
headers intact, before it is run through SpamAssassin and after it is run
through SpamAssassin.
Comment 6 Mike Bradley 2008-01-24 03:24:33 UTC
We have been postulating that the problem may actually be in the Postfix 
program which is not really a part of SA.  The strange part is that we have 
seen evidence that even when we receive a forwarded mail that contains a 
blackberry message, the blackberry part is garbled but the rest of the non 
blackberry message is fine. ????  The impression is that it is the SA that is 
causing the problem and that IS a problem for SA.
Comment 7 Mark Martinec 2008-01-24 03:51:28 UTC
> We have been postulating that the problem may actually be in the Postfix 
> program which is not really a part of SA.  The strange part is that we have 
> seen evidence that even when we receive a forwarded mail that contains a 
> blackberry message, the blackberry part is garbled but the rest of the non 
> blackberry message is fine. ????  The impression is that it is the SA that is 
> causing the problem and that IS a problem for SA.

You still haven't answered how you are calling SpamAssassin.

Without seeing evidence (raw message before it reaches SA, and afterwards),
there is not much we can do here to help. If messages are coming in
through Postfix, and you spot such message still in a MTA queue (e.g. by
stalling content filtering), you may use a 'postcat -q queueid >0.msg'
command to obtain a readable raw copy of a message.
Comment 8 Mike Bradley 2008-01-24 19:26:48 UTC
The bug is not with SA but with the postfix part of mailscanner.  My supplier 
is re-inventing his appliance to fix the issue.  Thanks for your responses.
Comment 9 Matt Kettler 2008-01-24 19:41:16 UTC
For future reference, when using MailScanner, SpamAssassin never touches the
copy of the message that gets delivered to your mailbox. MailScanner calls SA to
generate scores, but then performs its own markups on the original message.