Xref: utzoo comp.unix.wizards:25772 news.sysadmin:3838 comp.mail.misc:5618 comp.unix.misc:1481
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!thunder.mcrcim.mcgill.edu!mouse
From: mouse@thunder.mcrcim.mcgill.edu (der Mouse)
Newsgroups: comp.security,comp.unix.wizards,news.sysadmin,comp.mail.misc,comp.unix.misc
Subject: Re: Need UUENCODE scanner for mail and news!!!
Message-ID: <1991May29.071836.10772@thunder.mcrcim.mcgill.edu>
Date: 29 May 91 07:18:36 GMT
References: <1991May23.171906.24112@hou.amoco.com>
Organization: McGill Research Centre for Intelligent Machines
Lines: 27

In article <1991May23.171906.24112@hou.amoco.com>, zwbm07@jupiter.hou.amoco.com (Walter Moore) writes:

> The subject says it all.  My organization is in the process of
> bringing email and usenet in and there is some concern about binaries
> being sent/received.  Therefore, I was wondering if someone could let
> me know if and where a program that scans for uuencoded files exists.

I'm not sure what you mean.  Do you want to prevent users from sending
binaries around?  If so, you'll have to disable all email; a
sufficiently determined user can fool any snoop.  One of the crypo
groups (sci.crypt, alt.privacy, or some such) recently saw a posting
from someone who'd written something to encode arbitrary data in what
on the surface appears to be a transcription of a sports broadcast, for
example.

If you just want to automate sending and receiving binaries, it's not
hard to detect uuencoded stuff: look for many consecutive lines of the
same length, all beginning with M.  Bracketing "begin" and "end" lines
can serve as an additional confirmation.  (The length of the lines
sometimes varies by a character or two; some versions seem to add
something at the end of each line.)

					der Mouse

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