Subject: Re: Mailing List Last Call for 2822 update internet-draft

From: Tony Hansen <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2007 00:12:18 -0400

The mailing list last call for the 2822 update is now over.

I believe we have mailing list consensus on the issues that have been
raised during the last call. After an updated draft is posted by Pete,
we'll be moving the draft forward to IETF last call.

	Tony

Tony Hansen wrote:
> There have been some comments on draft-resnick-2822upd-* but they have
> dwindled down to none.
> 
> This is a "formal" Mailing List Last Call on
> draft-resnick-2822upd-02.txt. The last call will last for two weeks
> time, ending on August 10, 2007.
> 
> The document will be discussed on the 822 mailing list,
> <[email-masked]>. Please send your comments there.

Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2007 00:12:18 -0400
From: Tony Hansen <[email-masked]>
To: ietf-822 mailing list <[email-masked]>
CC: SMTP Interest Group <[email-masked]>, LEMONADE WG <[email-masked]>, IMAP extensions mailing list <[email-masked]>, EAI WG <[email-masked]>, POP3 extensions mailing list <[email-masked]>, USEFOR WG <[email-masked]>, SIMPLE WG <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Mailing List Last Call for 2822 update internet-draft
Sender: [email-masked]

The mailing list last call for the 2822 update is now over.

I believe we have mailing list consensus on the issues that have been
raised during the last call. After an updated draft is posted by Pete,
we'll be moving the draft forward to IETF last call.

	Tony

Tony Hansen wrote:
> There have been some comments on draft-resnick-2822upd-* but they have
> dwindled down to none.
> 
> This is a "formal" Mailing List Last Call on
> draft-resnick-2822upd-02.txt. The last call will last for two weeks
> time, ending on August 10, 2007.
> 
> The document will be discussed on the 822 mailing list,
> <[email-masked]>. Please send your comments there.

To: [email-masked]
Xref: clerew local.usefor:24742
Path: clerew!chl
From: "Charles Lindsey" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Definitions (Re: #1416 Injection-Date: proposed diff)
Date: Tue, 7 Aug 2007 10:58:48 GMT
Lines: 24
Sender: [email-masked]

In <[email-masked]> Russ Allbery <[email-masked]> writes:

>Harald Alvestrand <[email-masked]> writes:

>> "Parallel injection"?

>That would work.  Shall I add all three definitions to the definitions
>section?  Or, asked better, does anyone have any objections to me doing
>so?

I am not sure there are three separate concepts. I think maybe "parallel
injection" and "reinjection" are the two most useful. But Russ should play
around with some wordings and see how they would work out.

-- 
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
Tel: +44 161 436 6131 Fax: +44 161 436 6133   Web: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl
Email: [email-masked]      Snail: 5 Clerewood Ave, CHEADLE, SK8 3JU, U.K.
PGP: 2C15F1A9      Fingerprint: 73 6D C2 51 93 A0 01 E7 65 E8 64 7E 14 A4 AB A5

To: [email-masked]
Xref: clerew local.usefor:24739
Path: clerew!chl
From: "Charles Lindsey" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: #1416 Injection-Date: proposed diff
Date: Mon, 6 Aug 2007 15:57:06 GMT
Lines: 70
Sender: [email-masked]

In <[email-masked]> Russ Allbery <[email-masked]> writes:

>"Charles Lindsey" <[email-masked]> writes:

>He's doing multiple serial injection, not multiple parallel injection.
>Yeah, we definitely do need to clarify terms here; I can see how it's hard
>to have a conversation about this with the current terms.  I think we
>should probably go back to the terms we were using before and use:

>    multiple injection: sending the same proto-article to multiple
>    injecting agents.

>    reinjection: taking a netnews article, converting it back into a
>    proto-article, and sending it to an injecting agent.

Yes, I think the terminology is really the point at issue. The actual
protocol (who MUST/SHOULD/MAY do what, and when) is described correctly in
what you have already written (apart from small differences between IR and
IC, which are a separate issue).

>By those definitions, he's not doing multiple injection because they're
>mutually exclusive.  (Well, unless his conversion process recovers exactly
>the same proto-article as he had originally, which one can do with care in
>a local news environment that's under one's complete control, but which is
>not horribly interesting in the general case.)

>> But, in fact he was multi-injecting,

>He was injecting once and then reinjecting, thereby leaving himself open
>to all of the possible problems created by running the article through an
>injecting agent more than once.  He SHOULD be doing multiple injection
>instead (as defined above), for precisely that reason.

No, this particular guy could not have done multiple injection, because he
was not the original injector of that article. What he should have done is
refrain from doing anything in this situation. Of course, if the original
genuine injector had managed to put an Injection-Date there, then the
possibility of harm arrising from what we should now call the reinjection
is much reduced.

>> And he would probably argue, also, that his whole setup - newsreader,
>> CNEWS and all - could legitimately be regarded as one large MUA, since
>> he intended it to appear that way to the world outside.

>Posting agent, you mean, I assume.

Posting/reading/followup.

>Sure, if he wants to argue that, he can analyze it on that basis, but that
>means he can't do IHAVE to any other site.

Absolutely, but in this particular scenarion he wasn't (though there are a
bunch of other scenarios where that might have been a problem).

As we have said before, such leaks are bound to arise in the real world
whatever we say, and insisting that an Injection-Date, once added, is
NEVER removed protects against lots of them. But your wording now says
that, which is fine.

-- 
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
Tel: +44 161 436 6131 Fax: +44 161 436 6133   Web: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl
Email: [email-masked]      Snail: 5 Clerewood Ave, CHEADLE, SK8 3JU, U.K.
PGP: 2C15F1A9      Fingerprint: 73 6D C2 51 93 A0 01 E7 65 E8 64 7E 14 A4 AB A5

From: Russ Allbery <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: Definitions (Re: #1416 Injection-Date: proposed diff)
Organization: The Eyrie
Date: Mon, 06 Aug 2007 01:02:33 -0700
Sender: [email-masked]

Harald Alvestrand <[email-masked]> writes:
> Russ Allbery wrote:

>> That's the approach I was taking, but it means that there isn't a term
>> we can use to talk about the subset of multiple injection that's *not*
>> reinjection, the approach that we're encouraging.  Which was proving
>> challenging.

> "Parallel injection"?

That would work.  Shall I add all three definitions to the definitions
section?  Or, asked better, does anyone have any objections to me doing
so?

-- 
Russ Allbery ([email-masked])             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>

Date: Mon, 06 Aug 2007 09:15:29 +0200
From: Harald Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
To: Russ Allbery <[email-masked]>
Cc: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: Definitions (Re: #1416 Injection-Date: proposed diff)
Sender: [email-masked]

Russ Allbery wrote:
> H
>
>> I would call reinjection a subset of multiple injection.
>>     
>
> That's the approach I was taking, but it means that there isn't a term we
> can use to talk about the subset of multiple injection that's *not*
> reinjection, the approach that we're encouraging.  Which was proving
> challenging.
>
>   
"Parallel injection"?

From: Russ Allbery <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: Definitions (Re: #1416 Injection-Date: proposed diff)
Organization: The Eyrie
Date: Sat, 04 Aug 2007 12:06:49 -0700
Sender: [email-masked]

Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]> writes:
> --On 3. august 2007 09:52 -0700 Russ Allbery <[email-masked]> wrote:

>>     multiple injection: sending the same proto-article to multiple
>>     injecting agents.
>>
>>     reinjection: taking a netnews article, converting it back into a
>>     proto-article, and sending it to an injecting agent.
>>
>> By those definitions, he's not doing multiple injection because they're
>> mutually exclusive.  (Well, unless his conversion process recovers exactly
>> the same proto-article as he had originally, which one can do with care in
>> a local news environment that's under one's complete control, but which is
>> not horribly interesting in the general case.)

> I would call reinjection a subset of multiple injection.

That's the approach I was taking, but it means that there isn't a term we
can use to talk about the subset of multiple injection that's *not*
reinjection, the approach that we're encouraging.  Which was proving
challenging.

-- 
Russ Allbery ([email-masked])             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>

Date: Sat, 04 Aug 2007 20:40:26 +0200
From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
To: Russ Allbery <[email-masked]>, [email-masked]
Subject: Definitions (Re: #1416 Injection-Date: proposed diff)
Sender: [email-masked]

Changing the subject line once in a while is a nice thing....

--On 3. august 2007 09:52 -0700 Russ Allbery <[email-masked]> wrote:

>
>     multiple injection: sending the same proto-article to multiple
>     injecting agents.
>
>     reinjection: taking a netnews article, converting it back into a
>     proto-article, and sending it to an injecting agent.
>
> By those definitions, he's not doing multiple injection because they're
> mutually exclusive.  (Well, unless his conversion process recovers exactly
> the same proto-article as he had originally, which one can do with care in
> a local news environment that's under one's complete control, but which is
> not horribly interesting in the general case.)
>

I would call reinjection a subset of multiple injection.

The article *purports* to be the same article (same Date:, same 
Message-ID), and the Netnews networks will treat it as if it was the same 
article. Any errors resulting in differences between the two articles are 
just that - errors.

            Harald

From: Russ Allbery <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: #1416 Injection-Date: proposed diff
Organization: The Eyrie
Date: Fri, 03 Aug 2007 09:52:27 -0700
Sender: [email-masked]

"Charles Lindsey" <[email-masked]> writes:

> Yes, I suppose he is technically doing reinjection, since he injected it
> into his own server, and his own server then reinjected when it sent it
> on.

There's nothing technical about it.  That's exactly what he's doing.

> But that is little more than hair splitting, since the article as thus
> injected the first time is still a valid proto-article, and contains no
> evidence of the event apart from an entry in the Path (and odd entries
> at the RH end of the Path are commonly put there for all sorts of odd
> reasons).

It's not hair-splitting -- it's the entire point.  This is why strict
definitions of agents and strict statements about flow between those
agents are important!

Someone who takes an existing news article and injects it again, rather
than taking the same proto-article and injecting it in multiple locations,
is reinjecting.  They therefore are responsible for getting the details
right as described in our draft.  It's possible that this will mean
specifically *not* doing some things, rather than anything they have to
do.  But any time you do that, no matter why you're doing that, you're
doing reinjection and have to pay attention to the relevant parts of the
protocol.

> But that 'technical' reinjection was not the cause of the problem. The
> man was totally convinced that he was not doing multi-injection (and so
> maybe saw no reason to provide an Injection-Date).

He's doing multiple serial injection, not multiple parallel injection.
Yeah, we definitely do need to clarify terms here; I can see how it's hard
to have a conversation about this with the current terms.  I think we
should probably go back to the terms we were using before and use:

    multiple injection: sending the same proto-article to multiple
    injecting agents.

    reinjection: taking a netnews article, converting it back into a
    proto-article, and sending it to an injecting agent.

By those definitions, he's not doing multiple injection because they're
mutually exclusive.  (Well, unless his conversion process recovers exactly
the same proto-article as he had originally, which one can do with care in
a local news environment that's under one's complete control, but which is
not horribly interesting in the general case.)

> But, in fact he was multi-injecting,

He was injecting once and then reinjecting, thereby leaving himself open
to all of the possible problems created by running the article through an
injecting agent more than once.  He SHOULD be doing multiple injection
instead (as defined above), for precisely that reason.

Of course, he certainly MAY add Injection-Date headers regardless, to be
more robust against people (including possibly himself) violating that
SHOULD.

> And I did not necessarily mean to imply that that he had written that
> script himself - it could have been obtained from all sorts of sources.

This still isn't creating a situation where no one has responsibility for
knowing that reinjection is happening.

> And he would probably argue, also, that his whole setup - newsreader,
> CNEWS and all - could legitimately be regarded as one large MUA, since
> he intended it to appear that way to the world outside.

Posting agent, you mean, I assume.

Sure, if he wants to argue that, he can analyze it on that basis, but that
means he can't do IHAVE to any other site.  As soon as his supposed
posting agent starts also acting like an injecting or relaying agent,
doing things that posting agents don't do, it's clear that he can't treat
it as a single monolithic entity and has to analyze the components for
compliance.

-- 
Russ Allbery ([email-masked])             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>

To: [email-masked]
Xref: clerew local.usefor:24735
Path: clerew!chl
From: "Charles Lindsey" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: #1416 Injection-Date: proposed diff
Date: Fri, 3 Aug 2007 13:01:21 GMT
Lines: 47
Sender: [email-masked]

In <[email-masked]> Russ Allbery <[email-masked]> writes:

>"Charles Lindsey" <[email-masked]> writes:

>> CNEWS out of the box is configured to use UUCP, and its facilities for
>> using NNTP are somewhat rudimentary. But if you provide it with a script
>> that will call some NNTP server using the proper POST command, then it
>> will use it.

>Then that script is reinjection software.  So the person who wrote that
>script is doing reinjection, and is responsible for following the rules
>for doing so.  And that person *wrote* reinjection software, so certainly
>knows that he's doing reinjection.  (He may not, however, know that's what
>it's called, or that it's potentially dangerous.)

Yes, I suppose he is technically doing reinjection, since he injected it
into his own server, and his own server then reinjected when it sent it
on. But that is little more than hair splitting, since the article as thus
injected the first time is still a valid proto-article, and contains no
evidence of the event apart from an entry in the Path (and odd entries at
the RH end of the Path are commonly put there for all sorts of odd
reasons). That will, of course, change when once injected articles contain
Injection-Info and Injection-Date headers, etc, and if the man takes steps
to remove those then he is getting to more dangerous ground.

But that 'technical' reinjection was not the cause of the problem. The man
was totally convinced that he was not doing multi-injection (and so maybe
saw no reason to provide an Injection-Date). But, in fact he was
multi-injecting, in the one rare case that he had overlooked (and that is
typical of the way that "leaks" come about).

And I did not necessarily mean to imply that that he had written that
script himself - it could have been obtained from all sorts of sources.
And he would probably argue, also, that his whole setup - newsreader,
CNEWS and all - could legitimately be regarded as one large MUA, since he
intended it to appear that way to the world outside.

-- 
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
Tel: +44 161 436 6131 Fax: +44 161 436 6133   Web: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl
Email: [email-masked]      Snail: 5 Clerewood Ave, CHEADLE, SK8 3JU, U.K.
PGP: 2C15F1A9      Fingerprint: 73 6D C2 51 93 A0 01 E7 65 E8 64 7E 14 A4 AB A5

From: Russ Allbery <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: #1416 Injection-Date: proposed diff
Organization: The Eyrie
Date: Thu, 02 Aug 2007 21:39:21 -0700
Sender: [email-masked]

"Charles Lindsey" <[email-masked]> writes:

> CNEWS out of the box is configured to use UUCP, and its facilities for
> using NNTP are somewhat rudimentary. But if you provide it with a script
> that will call some NNTP server using the proper POST command, then it
> will use it.

Then that script is reinjection software.  So the person who wrote that
script is doing reinjection, and is responsible for following the rules
for doing so.  And that person *wrote* reinjection software, so certainly
knows that he's doing reinjection.  (He may not, however, know that's what
it's called, or that it's potentially dangerous.)

> Now you may argue that using a full-fledged server such as CNEWS at home
> is a dangerous tool in the hands of the unskilled, but lots of people
> find it convenient to do it, and you may be sure that some of them are
> less skilled than others.

CNEWS is just fine on this particular front.  CNEWS contains no
reinjection software.  The script is what's causing any potential
problems, since it's now doing reinjection, which is inherently tricky and
must be done carefully.

> But for sure you cannot say that this guy "knew" that his system might
> reinject;

But he wrote a script that didn't otherwise exist specifically to do so!

> What is "regular news software"?

Software like CNEWS, or trn, or Netscape, or any other bit of software
that uses the normal convention of POST for injection and IHAVE for
relaying and which doesn't POST articles it obtained from elsewhere.

-- 
Russ Allbery ([email-masked])             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>

To: [email-masked]
Xref: clerew local.usefor:24733
Path: clerew!chl
From: "Charles Lindsey" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: #1416 Injection-Date: proposed diff
Date: Thu, 2 Aug 2007 17:38:04 GMT
Lines: 70
Sender: [email-masked]

In <[email-masked]> Russ Allbery <[email-masked]> writes:

>I don't know if I'm just not being clear or why we're having so much
>trouble communicating.

>If he has *any* software installed on his system *anywhere* that will
>taken an existing post and reinject it, he has reinjection software.  He
>therefore knows he has reinjection software and it is his responsibility
>to configure it to do the right thing (and the right thing does not depend
>on hierarchy or where the post is going).  It is not possible for him to
>be doing reinjection and not know it.

On the contrary, it is perfectly possible if you are using CNEWS (and
probably BNEWS before it). I wouldn't know what INN would do.

CNEWS out of the box is configured to use UUCP, and its facilities for
using NNTP are somewhat rudimentary. But if you provide it with a script
that will call some NNTP server using the proper POST command, then it
will use it.

So this guy has arranged to use such a script to inject stuff both to the
central node of his local network and to the server provided by his ISP.

And he has configured his sys file to send articles to the local groups to
the that central node, and usenet groups to his ISP. And he honestly
believes that everything he sends is injecting to exactly one of those
servers. And his sysfile also ensures that stuff arriving from one of
those servers is never sent back to it (by looking at the incoming Paths,
of course). And it all appears to work.

Now you may argue that using a full-fledged server such as CNEWS at home
is a dangerous tool in the hands of the unskilled, but lots of people find
it convenient to do it, and you may be sure that some of them are less
skilled than others.

What this guy forgot, of course, is the case of cross posts between local
and Usenet groups (which were doubtless very rare anyway). But as he has
it, such an article arriving from the central server of the local network
will get sent out on the Usenet link. The sys file can easily be
configured to prevent that, once you have been made aware of the problem.

But for sure you cannot say that this guy "knew" that his system might
reinject; you can say that he SHOULD have known it, but in fact for an
unskilled bloke he did pretty well to get it configured as well as he did.

>  Regular news software does not do
>reinjection.  He has explicitly installed and configured software to do
>that, and that software can therefore be configured appropriately.

What is "regular news software"?

>It doesn't matter whether it's possible to accidentally direct posts to it
>or not.  That's not at all the point.  The point is that there's normal
>news software and there's reinjection software and it's quite clear which
>is which.

And there is also software which can do both. It would not surprise me
that INN could have been misconfigured in that way, but my knowledge of
INN is extremely limited.

-- 
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
Tel: +44 161 436 6131 Fax: +44 161 436 6133   Web: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl
Email: [email-masked]      Snail: 5 Clerewood Ave, CHEADLE, SK8 3JU, U.K.
PGP: 2C15F1A9      Fingerprint: 73 6D C2 51 93 A0 01 E7 65 E8 64 7E 14 A4 AB A5

From: Russ Allbery <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: #1416 Injection-Date: proposed diff
Organization: The Eyrie
Date: Wed, 01 Aug 2007 21:27:40 -0700
Sender: [email-masked]

"Charles Lindsey" <[email-masked]> writes:
> Russ Allbery <[email-masked]> writes:

>> Not if he's using POST he doesn't, and if he's not using POST, he's not
>> reinjecting.

> Yes, but even if the mail is sent to a site where your configuration
> causes POST to be used, it is still pretty easy to inadvertently
> misconfigure a sys file so that the effect happens. And it may be an
> awful long time before the guy recognizes that he is misconfigured.

I don't know if I'm just not being clear or why we're having so much
trouble communicating.

If he has *any* software installed on his system *anywhere* that will
taken an existing post and reinject it, he has reinjection software.  He
therefore knows he has reinjection software and it is his responsibility
to configure it to do the right thing (and the right thing does not depend
on hierarchy or where the post is going).  It is not possible for him to
be doing reinjection and not know it.  Regular news software does not do
reinjection.  He has explicitly installed and configured software to do
that, and that software can therefore be configured appropriately.

It doesn't matter whether it's possible to accidentally direct posts to it
or not.  That's not at all the point.  The point is that there's normal
news software and there's reinjection software and it's quite clear which
is which.  There's no ambiguity about what a particular piece of software
is doing.

-- 
Russ Allbery ([email-masked])             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>

To: [email-masked]
Xref: clerew local.usefor:24731
Path: clerew!chl
From: "Charles Lindsey" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: #1416 Injection-Date: proposed diff
Date: Wed, 1 Aug 2007 20:23:57 GMT
Lines: 33
Sender: [email-masked]

In <[email-masked]> Russ Allbery <[email-masked]> writes:

>"Charles Lindsey" <[email-masked]> writes:
>> Russ Allbery <[email-masked]> writes:

>>> So he still knows he's reinjecting (or not) and therefore his software
>>> still handles Injection-Date properly unless his software has been
>>> broken all along for comp.* as well.

>> No, he thinks he is just relaying an article to comp.misc.

>Not if he's using POST he doesn't, and if he's not using POST, he's not
>reinjecting.

Yes, but even if the mail is sent to a site where your configuration causes
POST to be used, it is still pretty easy to inadvertently misconfigure
a sys file so that the effect happens. And it may be an awful long time
before the guy recognizes that he is misconfigured.

I should know, because I once had a sys file misconfigured in that way,
and it was some time before I noticed that I was sending out far more
material than I should.

-- 
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
Tel: +44 161 436 6131 Fax: +44 161 436 6133   Web: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl
Email: [email-masked]      Snail: 5 Clerewood Ave, CHEADLE, SK8 3JU, U.K.
PGP: 2C15F1A9      Fingerprint: 73 6D C2 51 93 A0 01 E7 65 E8 64 7E 14 A4 AB A5