237551 - Can not initialise TLS over SMTP protocol (fails to send an e-mail)

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(MailNews Core :: Networking: SMTP, defect)

Description

[Harold Molina-Bulla]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7b) Gecko/20040313 MultiZilla/1.6.2.1d
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7b) Gecko/20040313 MultiZilla/1.6.2.1d

When try to send an email using TLS, the mozilla reply: Sending of message
failed: unable to connect to SMTP server.....

Using mozilla over Solaris works well.



Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.Configure the SMTP server with TLS (always)
2.Edit and try to send an e-mail
3.Send fails




Reading with ethereal the transaction between client and server we can observe:
 
Client send: Command EHLO tsc.uc3m.es
Server reply: 250 Server Name
              250 PIPELINING
              250 HELP
              250 EXPN
              250 ETRN
              250 DSN
              250 SIZE
              250 STARTTLS

After this, the error pop window is show with the previous error message
"Sending of message failed....". 

The client send a QUIT command after push the CANCEL button.

Comment 1

[Christian Eyrich]

So you can utilize Ethereal, could you please tell me the next lines after
Mozilla issues the STARTTLS command (it does, yes?)?

Comment 2

[Harold Molina-Bulla]

About the request for the next tcp interactions:

Mozilla never sends the command STARTTLS, show the pop-up window when receive
the reply from the server with the available commands. After receive this
package, the client send the tcp ack. Meanwhile the browser show the pop-up with
the error message. When press cancel, the client send a QUIT SMTP command and
cloise the connection

Comment 3

[Christian Eyrich]

Do you have any Antivirus/Proxy/Personal Firewall running on your machine? If
yes, does it still happens when you shut this sofware down COMPLETELY?
Unfortunatelly Ethereal seems to be unable to sniff the loopback on Windows (at
least on Win95, maybe it does on XP - if so, please log this traffic too).

Comment 4

[David Rothenberger]

(In reply to comment #3)
> Do you have any Antivirus/Proxy/Personal Firewall running on your machine?

I had the exact same problem under Windows XP and found that disabling Email
scanning in Norton Antivirus software solved the problem.

Comment 5

[Hernán Freschi]

*** Bug 281553 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 6

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

Confirming based on dupe and the detailed reports from that bug and this one.
However, I don't have a secure SMTP server to test with.

Comment 7

[Richard M. Mathews]

It fails to connect even before trying to deal with logging in, so you don't
need an account on a secure SMTP server.  You can try connecting to
mail.alumni.caltech.edu, port 25, using TLS.  If you can get the STARTTLS out,
you are in good shape.

The problem seems to be with Symantec antivirus software blocking the STARTTLS
from going out.  I don't know if there is anything Mozilla can do to work around
the antivirus software's heavy handed blocking.

Comment 8

[Christian Eyrich]

(In reply to comment #7)
> The problem seems to be with Symantec antivirus software blocking the STARTTLS
> from going out. 

Erm, no. The error message cited in bug 281553 is thrown if Mozilla can't see
"STARTTLS" listed in EHLO response (and the text says exactly this).
To my knowledge the AV removes that line from the servers response. See also
http://www.eyrich-net.org/mozilla/mozvsav.en.html#two

> I don't know if there is anything Mozilla can do to work around the antivirus
> software's heavy handed blocking.

I don't know a way to work around that. The interesting thing is that manually
connecting to the server via telnet isn't affected. I understand this difference
if the AV software requires the client to be configured to use localhost:25 as
server. But AFAIK some AV don't.

One can create a mozilla log (see instructions at
http://www.mozilla.org/quality/mailnews/mail-troubleshoot.html#smtp) to see
what's received from Mozilla's point of view. AFAIK Ethereal/tcpdump log the
data before AV's interception.

Comment 9

[Brian Dolan-Goecke]

Happens with AVG 7 ( free version) Have to go into shutdown the services to be
able to send.  Just using AVG control center to stop email scanning or stopping
the program didn't do it.

Was able to use stunnel and a ssl connection to get secure email.

Was using windows 2000.

Comment 10

[Matthew Ohlmeyer]

I can confirm this same issue when using Avast!
To workaround this on the client end:
1.) Right click the Avast icon, and choose "On-Access Protection Control"
2.) If the provider icons are not showing on the left, then click "Details"
3.) Click the Internet Mail icon
4.) Click Customize
5.) Click the SMTP tab
6.) Uncheck "Scan outbound mail"
7.) Click OK
8.) Click OK

You should now be able to send mail via TLS

Comment 11

[Danny Mayer]

*** Bug 298248 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 12

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

sorry for the spam.  making bugzilla reflect reality as I'm not working on these bugs.  filter on FOOBARCHEESE to remove these in bulk.

Comment 13

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Is problem gone for you?

In follow up to comment #10, "I can confirm this same issue when using Avast!" Matt writes: "the issue at least does not exist at this time in this configuration."

Comment 14

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to comment #8)
> (In reply to comment #7)
> > The problem seems to be with Symantec antivirus software blocking the STARTTLS
> > from going out. 
> 
> Erm, no. The error message cited in bug 281553 is thrown if Mozilla can't see
> "STARTTLS" listed in EHLO response (and the text says exactly this).
> To my knowledge the AV removes that line from the servers response. See also
> http://www.eyrich-net.org/mozilla/mozvsav.en.html#two

the message cited there is 
 "...unable to connect to SMTP server smtp.gmail.com via STARTTLS since 
 he doesn't offer STARTTLS in EHLO response...."

Christian, so should this bug closed INVALID?

Comment 15

[Christian Eyrich]

Closing since this is no Mozilla issue and we report the issues cause correctly.