Network Working Group Jutta Degener Internet Draft Sendmail, Inc. Expires: October 2003 April 2003 Sieve -- "editheader" extension Status of this memo This document is an Internet-Draft and is subject to all provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet- Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress." The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/1id-abstracts.html The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html Abstract This document defines three new actions for the "sieve" language that add, delete, and change e-mail header fields. 1. Introduction Email headers are a flexible and easy to understand means of communication between email processors. This extension enables sieve scripts to interact with other components that consume or produce header fields by allowing the script to delete, modify, and add header fields itself. 2. Conventions used. Conventions for notations are as in [SIEVE] section 1.1, including use of [KEYWORDS] and "Syntax:" label for the definition of action and tagged arguments syntax. The capability string associated with extension defined in this document is "editheader". 3. Action addheader Syntax: "addheader" The addheader action appends a header field to the existing message header. The name MUST be a valid 7-bit US-ASCII header field name as described by RFC 2822 "field-name" nonterminal. If the specified field value does not match the RFC 2822 "unstructured" nonterminal or exceeds a length limit set by the implementation, the implementation MUST either flag an error or encode the field using folding white space and the encodings described in RFC 2047 or RFC 2231 to be compliant with RFC 2822. The header field MUST be added at the end of the existing header. An implementation MAY impose a length limit onto the size of the encoded header field; such a limit MUST NOT be less than 998 characters, not including the terminating CRLF supplied by the implementation. Example: /* Don't redirect if we already redirected */ if not header :contains "X-Sieve-Filtered" ["", ""] { addheader "X-Sieve-Filtered" ""; redirect "kim@home.tld"; } 4. Action deleteheader Syntax: "deleteheader" [":index" [":last"]] [COMPARATOR] [MATCH-TYPE] [] By default, the deleteheader action deletes all occurrences of the named header field. The field-name is mandatory and always matched as a case-insensitive us-ascii string. The value-patterns, if specified, are matched according to the match type and comparator. If none are specified, all values match. The field-name MUST be a valid 7-bit header field name as described by the RFC 2822 "field-name" nonterminal. If :index is specified, the attempts to match a value are limited to the header field (beginning at 1, the first named header field). If :last is specified, the count is backwards; 1 denotes the last named header field, 2 the second to last, and so on. The counting happens before the match, if any; deleteheader :index 2 :contains "Received" "via carrier-pigeon" deletes the second "Received:" header field if it contains the string "via carrier-pigeon" (not the second Received: field that contains "via carrier-pigeon"). 5. Action replaceheader Syntax: "replaceheader" [":index" [":last"]] [":newname" ] [":newvalue" ] [COMPARATOR] [MATCH-TYPE] [] The replaceheader action replaces all or parts of a header field, in some or all occurrences of that header field. If :index is specified, the attempts to match a value are limited to the named header field (beginning at 1, the first named header field). If :last is specified, the count is backwards; 1 denotes the last named header field, 2 the second to last, and so on. As with "deleteheader", the counting happens before the match, if any. The header field names in the field-name and in the ":newname" argument, if specified, MUST be valid 7-bit header field names as described by the RFC 2822 "field-name" nonterminal. The field-name is mandatory and always matched as a case-insensitive us-ascii string. The value-patterns, if specified, are matched according to the match type and comparator. (If no value-patterns are specified, they always match.) If :newname is specified, the action changes the name of all matching header fields to . If :newvalue is specified, the action changes the value of all matching header fields to to . If the [VARIABLES] extension is present and the MATCH-TYPE is a type that interacts with the [VARIABLES] extension, variable references to ${1}...${N} in the replacement string following ":newvalue" are evaluated according to the matched substring in the header field that is being replaced. For example, replaceheader :newvalue "[ADV] ${1}" :matches "Subject" "*"; would insert an "[ADV]" tag before the value of the "Subject" header field, changing Subject: Make Money Fast!! to Subject: [ADV] Make Money Fast!! If neither :newname nor :newvalue are specified, the operation still matches its argument and, in the presence of the [VARIABLES] extension and a match type that interacts with it, sets the ${1}...${N} variables to the last header matched. 6. Interaction with Other Sieve Extensions Tests and actions such as "exist" or "header" that examine headers MUST examine the current state of a header as modified by any actions that have taken place so far. Actions that create messages in storage or in transport to MTAs MUST store and send messages with the current set of header fields. 7. Security Considerations Someone with write access to a user's script storage may use this extension to generate headers that a user would otherwise be shielded from (by a gateway MTA that removes them). A sieve filter that removes headers may unwisely destroy evidence about the path a header has taken. Any change in a message content may interfere with digital signature mechanisms that include the header in the signed material. Any decision mechanism in a user's filter that is based on headers is vulnerable to header spoofing. For example, if the user adds an APPROVED header or tag, a malicious sender may add that tag or header themselves. One way to guard against this is to delete or rename any such headers or stamps prior to processing the message. 8. Acknowledgments Thanks to Eric Allman, Philip Guenther, Will Lee, Chris Markle, Randall Schwartz, and Rand Wacker for extensive corrections and suggestions. 9. Author's Address Jutta Degener Sendmail, Inc. 6425 Christie Ave, 4th Floor Emeryville, CA 94608 Email: jutta@sendmail.com 10. Discussion This section will be removed when this document leaves the Internet-Draft stage. This draft is intended as an extension to the Sieve mail filtering language. Sieve extensions are discussed on the MTA Filters mailing list at . Subscription requests can be sent to (send an email message with the word "subscribe" in the body). More information on the mailing list along with a WWW archive of back messages is available at . Appendices Appendix A. References [SIEVE] Showalter, T., "Sieve: A Mail Filtering Language", RFC 3028, January 2001. [KEYWORDS] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels", RFC 2119, March 1997. [VARIABLES] Homme, K.T., "Sieve -- Variables Extension", draft-homme-sieve-variables-01.txt, April 2003. Appendix B. Full Copyright Statement Copyright (C) The Internet Society 2002. All Rights Reserved. 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