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From: Adam Shostack <adam@homeport.org>
Message-Id: <199611181223.HAA12303@homeport.org>
Subject: Re: BoS: Exploit for sendmail smtpd bug (ver. 8.7-8.8.2).
In-Reply-To: <Mutt.19961118065934.roberto@keltia.freenix.fr> from Ollivier Robert at "Nov 18, 96 06:59:34 am"
To: roberto@keltia.freenix.fr (Ollivier Robert)
Date: Mon, 18 Nov 1996 07:23:29 -0500 (EST)
Cc: freebsd-security@FreeBSD.org
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Ollivier Robert wrote:
| According to Adam Shostack:
| > planning to replace sendmail with qmail real soon, and that helps me a
| > lot.  My suggestion was meant to imply the possibility of removing
| > sendmail from the FreeBSD distribution, and only shipping qmail.
| 
| I'd strongly object to this. In addition of what Warner said I must add
| that qmail's UUCP support is noneexitent or rather anti-UUCP in the sense
| that it generates multiple messages when a mail has multiple recipient.
| 
| I manage several mailing-lists on my home machine and am the administrator
| of another one with lots of UUCP users and qmail is unusable.

	While you raise a valid point, which is UUCP still exists,
does it exist in the majority of systems out there?  If not, should
the default system config include a mailer which is archetecturally
incapable of being secure?  I can't object to your need, and the need
of some others, to keep UUCP going, but I'm not convinced that it
should be the default for most people.

| I still can't bear the configuration system of qmail (lots of .qmail-mumble
| everywhere, user defined mailing-lists that can't be disabled) and the
| author's attitude in general[1] (but that's another problem).

	I'll agree with you wholeheartedly here.  Lastly, it seems
that author attitude are inseperable from the kind of hubris needed to
write an MTA. :}

Adam

-- 
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once."
					               -Hume