English
The first versions of SMTP used `HELO` as the first command sent by a client to a SMTP server. When SMTP was extended to support newer features such as 8 bits characters, it was necessary to allow a server to recognize whether it was interacting with a client that supported the extensions or not. `EHLO` became mandatory with the publication of :rfc:`2821`.
This implies that a valid email message cannot contain a line with one dot followed by `CR` and `LF`. If a user types such a line in an email, his email client will automatically add a space character before or after the dot when sending the message over SMTP.
:rfc:`1939` defines the APOP authentication scheme that is not vulnerable to such attacks.