163852 - S/MIME signed mails with spaces (asc#32) at end-of-line causes problem

Status: NEW

(MailNews Core :: MIME, defect)

Description

[Christian Emig]

Mozilla Mail should erase spaces (asc#32) at the end of messages before singing
them. There are SMTP-Servers and Listservers like LISTSERV that delete spaces at
the end of a line which causes that the signature becomes invalid.

This problem can be easily solved if Mozilla erases these non-neccessary spaces
before signing and sending the message.

Potentially relevevant RFCs: 2821 (SMTP-Servers should (only) tolerate spaces at
line's end), 3156 (PGP-related, no spaces at the end allowed), 2045 (handling of
MIME-messages)

Comment 1

[Nelson Bolyard (seldom reads bugmail)]

Stripping spaces at end-of-line is wrong, because it breaks format=flowed.

The correct solution for signed messages is to use a content transfer 
encoding that will avoid all transcoding by MTAs, such as changing line 
endings, removing trailing spaces, and changing 8-bit to 7-bit encoding.

Base64 encoding of signed messages seems to be the only idiot-proof 
solution.