476288 - Thunderbird displays empty message window and wrongly detects attachment when invalid Content-Type: header is present - Make TB more tolerant to incorrect headers

Status: NEW

(MailNews Core :: MIME, enhancement)

Description

[Grumbler]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.19) Gecko/20081202 Iceweasel/2.0.0.19 (Debian-2.0.0.19-0etch1)
Build Identifier: Thunderbirg version 1.x.x up to 2.0.0

I received some messages from mail lists. Thunderird incorrectly parses these messages:
- before i select message, thunderbird displayed it's without the attachment sign; 
- I select message using mouse click, thunderbird displays attachment sign;
- I open message window for reading (double mouse click), thunderbird displays empty message;
- Thunderbird display attachment name "attachement";
- I may save attachment, thunderbird saves message text into file "attachment"
- or I may look message source and read message text.

Example of message kludges and text (lines betwen =BEGIN=OF=message=source= and =END=OF=message=source=):

=BEGIN=OF=message=source=
From - Sat Jan 31 22:04:33 2009
X-Account-Key: account2
X-UIDL: c0781311500f0738
X-Mozilla-Status: 0001
X-Mozilla-Status2: 10000000
Received: from happy.kiev.ua (happy.kiev.ua [213.133.161.33])
	by grumbler.org (8.10.2/8.10.2) with ESMTP id n0VGwqI50239
	for <[e-mail]>; Sat, 31 Jan 2009 21:58:52 +0500 (YEKT)
X-SMTP-From: bounce-binkd-diffs-g_nospam=[e-mail]
X-SMTP-To:   <[e-mail]>
Received: from majordomo by happy.kiev.ua with local (Exim 4.69)
	id 1LTJB3-0004qM-Ve
	for [e-mail]; Sat, 31 Jan 2009 18:58:41 +0200
Received: from gul by happy.kiev.ua with local (Exim 4.69)
	id 1LTJAZ-0004lm-4b
	for [e-mail]; Sat, 31 Jan 2009 18:58:11 +0200
Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2009 16:58:11 +0000
From: Pavel Gulchouck <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: [BINKD-DIFFS] binkd/mkfls/unix binkd.spec,1.4,1.5
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: 7bit
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-CVS-Root: /usr/local/cvsroot
X-CVS-User: gul
X-Mailer: syncmail.pl/1.4 (http://sf.net/projects/cvs-syncmail-pl)
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail]
Precedence: list
Reply-To: [e-mail]

Comments:
Modified Files:
	binkd.spec 
Log Message:
Auto increase patchlevel, set 1.0a-523
Update year in copyright line

------------> binkd-diffs maillist <---------------
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=END=OF=message=source=


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Open message example from "Details" field

Actual Results:  
1. See empty message window
2. See attachment

Expected Results:  
See message text

Thunderbird detects attachment uncondional if message contain line like

--------------------------

Mail MIME standard required kludge 'Content-Type:', for attachment use form:

Content-Type: multipart/xxxxxxx; boundary="----=_some_unique_id"

where xxxxxxx is "alternative" or "mixed"
If this kludge is not present in message head, thunderbird SHOULD displays message body

Comment 1

[Patrick_NY]

OK, more than a year later, but sounds like the same problem.
I just upgraded to TBird 3.04, but I don't think that's the issue. I had 2.6? running well until the upgrade. 
I received a message that was plain text, but the message had no text and instead had an attachment. I couldn't open the attachment, and it may have been empty. I could View the Source and read the message. This was a simple automated message from my own website and it has always displayed properly.
A little testing, it was repeatable. I generated a similar message directed to my gmail account, in it displayed properly in the same T-bird client. The copy to my own website account again failed.

I had also updated PCTools Anti-Virus today. Some research indicated other AV programs may cause this problem. I disabled email scanning both in and out. The problem disappeared. Now the text appears in the message body and there is no attachment. Nothing changed on the website which generates the message.

I can't read all the message header info, but it looks like the message was changed to multi-part, and that the first divider was placed before the message body text, making it an attachment.

I have no idea why this did not happen to the same message addressed to my gmail account, but the header looks different, with no multi-part and no dividers.

I believe the problem is with PCTools Av, but it would be nice if T-Bird could defend against this in some way. Anyway, I hope this information contributes to some of these forum messages. I selected this one as the most relevant. I am working ok but there is an opportunity for improvement here.

(If you wonder why I didn't post to PCTools, I tried. There were surprisingly few messages there. When I attempted to register, it said the Administrator had blocked my email account - the same one I always use here. No good reason I know, unless they just block all free email accounts, such as gmail. When I followed the link to find out why, they said I wasn't registered and couldn't go there. So, here I am.)

Comment 2

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Attachment: 476288_Testcase1.eml

Testcase message from comment 0.

Comment 3

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

with testcase

Comment 4

[Jorg K (CEST = GMT+2)]

Basically the message is invalid due to a repeated and invalid
Content-Type: 7bit
header.

That this trips up TB so badly is regrettable.