Man and machine (was Re: Is virus scanning interception?)

[Ken Brown]

Yes, but the mailer has to read each byte to know which is envelope and
which content.

Ben Laurie wrote:
> 
> Ken Brown wrote:
> > Regardless of the protocols pointed out by Quentin, an MTA must scan
> > content to determine what is content and what is metadata (including
> > headers). SMTP sends everything over the same channel, every MTA I ever
> > saw (Unix or otherwise) stores headers and content in the same file
> > system.
> 
> This is not correct. Although the channel is the same, the message
> content and "envelope" are quite distinct. MTAs route emails based on
> the envelope data, not the content.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Ben.
> 
> --
> http://www.apache-ssl.org/ben.html       http://www.thebunker.net/
> 
> Available for contract work!!
> 
> "There is no limit to what a man can do or how far he can go if he
> doesn't mind who gets the credit." - Robert Woodruff