msg-id generation

Paul Tomblin ptomblin at xcski.com
Tue Sep 21 18:34:49 UTC 1999


Quoting brister at vix.com (brister at vix.com):
> 
> > I wonder if it would make sense to use pathhost instead, or if we should
> > add an additional inn.conf parameter for this, like hostname, that would
> > be returned by GetFQDN() rather than trying lookups.
> 
> We should be careful how configurable we make it: we don't want to make it too
> easy for the admin's to create illegal message id's, nor do want to make it
> too easy for them to generate message id's appearing to come from another
> completely separate domain. Of course anyone with the source can do this now,
> but still...

I think the last sentence there is the telling one.  People have the source
code, so if they want to do something malicous they have the tools.  Let's not
make it too difficult to do something worthwhile and useful just to protect
people from doing something stupid through a misconfiguration or doing
something malicous.  

There are already a number of ways to shoot yourself in the foot if you set a
configuration variable without knowing what you're doing.  I don't see the
point of avoiding adding some useful functionality just to avoid another
chance for idiots to do idiotic things.

-- 
Paul Tomblin, not speaking for anybody.
SETI at Home:  Finally a *good* way to impress Jodie Foster
http://www.setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/


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