On Wed, 20 Feb 2002 at 22:51, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> we would like to know where to insert the "anonymizer" program in
> sendmail so that the sender's address will appear as anonymous? (this
> anonymizer is for a thesis project not as a spammer thing & not intended
> to create havoc to anybody) also, what parameter or variable holds the
> user name (as logged by the user in linux)? which part of sendmail is it
> declared?

Allen, you will not get any further by posting and reposting your damned
question. Really.

I wonder: do you actually UNDERSTAND the ultimate basics of how MTAs like
Sendmail actually work to begin with? And do you understand how email is
formatted, and consequently, how a sender can be "traced"?

I've asked this before, but I ask it again in the hopes that you will
realize this time around why finding an answer to these questions are
important.

Do you intend to anonymize all email? Or only email sent by some locally
logged on user?

Here's why I ask:

 - if you intend to anonymize all email, you can do a "shotgun" approach
by doing a regular expression search for the From, Sender, and X-Sender
headers. Like I suggested, you may want to check out the Mailman
information so that you know where to "insert" your anonymizer.

 - this is a "shotgun" approach because mail agents can decide to put
information in various headers. Squirrelmail, for example, creates a
received header specifying who the authenticated sender was.

 - if you intend to anonymize mail sent locally, you can create a
customized user agent, instead (ala mailtools, mailx). This can create
bogus values for the MAIL FROM command and the From header (or can ommit
the From header).

Furthermore, if you will anonymize all email (perhaps with a matching
@host.dom.ain) then you must know that Sendmail will -NOT- run as the
"sender" local user (which may not exist if mail is coming from a
non-local sender using you as a relay). It will run either as some
unprivileged user or perhaps as root (ugh). So you see, even if you had
access to the LOGNAME environment variable, this would NOT reflect the
user you want to mask.

On the other hand if you will just anonymize locally sent mail, your MUA
will be run as the user you want to mask. But you see, you do not need to
do regular expression replace anymore because you can control what
information is sent. For example, you can specify that the MAIL FROM
header sent is already some preset bogus user, and you can make sure that
the From is your bogus email address.

If there are points you cannot understand, please, quote the part of the
message discussing that and ask from there (ie: build on instead of start
from scratch). It's terribly frustrating to go through mail with that deja
vu feeling, as if my previous thought-out answer (or leading questions)
meant absolutely nothing.

 --> Jijo

--
Federico Sevilla III  :: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Network Administrator :: The Leather Collection, Inc.
GnuPG Key: http://jijo.leathercollection.ph/jijo.gpg

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