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../../protocols/email.rst:427
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Given the amount of spam messages, SMTP servers are no longer open :rfc:`5068`. Several extensions to SMTP have been developed in recent years to deal with this problem. For example, the SMTP authentication scheme defined in :rfc:`4954` can be used by an SMTP server to authenticate a client. Several techniques have also been proposed to allow SMTP servers to `authenticate` the messages sent by their users :rfc:`4870` :rfc:`4871` .
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The Post Office Protocol
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../../protocols/email.rst:435
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When the first versions of SMTP were designed, the Internet was composed of minicomputers that were used by an entire university department or research lab. These minicomputers were used by many users at the same time. Email was mainly used to send messages from a user on a given host to another user on a remote host. At that time, SMTP was the only protocol involved in the delivery of the emails as all hosts attached to the network were running an SMTP server. On such hosts, an email destined to local users was delivered by placing the email in a special directory or file owned by the user. However, the introduction of personal computers in the 1980s changed this environment. Initially, users of these personal computers used applications such as :term:`telnet` to open a remote session on the local :term:`minicomputer` to read their email. This was not user-friendly. A better solution appeared with the development of user friendly email client applications on personal computers. Several protocols were designed to allow these client applications to retrieve the email messages destined to a user from his/her server. Two of these protocols became popular and are still used today. The Post Office Protocol (POP), defined in :rfc:`1939`, is the simplest one. It allows a client to download all the messages destined to a given user from his/her email server. We describe POP briefly in this section. The second protocol is the Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP), defined in :rfc:`3501`. IMAP is more powerful, but also more complex than POP. IMAP was designed to allow client applications to efficiently access, in real-time, to messages stored in various folders on servers. IMAP assumes that all the messages of a given user are stored on a server and provides the functions that are necessary to search, download, delete or filter messages.
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../../protocols/email.rst:437
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POP is another example of a simple line-based protocol. POP runs above the bytestream service. A POP server usually listens to port 110. A POP session is composed of three parts : an `authorisation` phase during which the server verifies the client's credential, a `transaction` phase during which the client downloads messages and an `update` phase that concludes the session. The client sends commands and the server replies are prefixed by `+OK` to indicate a successful command or by `-ERR` to indicate errors.
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../../protocols/email.rst:439
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When a client opens a transport connection with the POP server, the latter sends as banner an ASCII-line starting with `+OK`. The POP session is at that time in the `authorisation` phase. In this phase, the client can send its username (resp. password) with the `USER` (resp. `PASS`) command. The server replies with `+OK` if the username (resp. password) is valid and `-ERR` otherwise.
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../../protocols/email.rst:441
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Once the username and password have been validated, the POP session enters in the `transaction` phase. In this phase, the client can issue several commands. The `STAT` command is used to retrieve the status of the server. Upon reception of this command, the server replies with a line that contains `+OK` followed by the number of messages in the mailbox and the total size of the mailbox in bytes. The `RETR` command, followed by a space and an integer, is used to retrieve the nth message of the mailbox. The `DELE` command is used to mark for deletion the nth message of the mailbox.
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../../protocols/email.rst:443
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Once the client has retrieved and possibly deleted the emails contained in the mailbox, it must issue the `QUIT` command. This command terminates the POP session and allows the server to delete all the messages that have been marked for deletion by using the `DELE` command.
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The figure below provides a simple POP session. All lines prefixed with `C:` (resp. `S:`) are sent by the client (resp. server).
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../../protocols/email.rst:471
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In this example, a POP client contacts a POP server on behalf of the user named `alice`. Note that in this example, Alice's password is sent in clear by the client. This implies that if someone is able to capture the packets sent by Alice, he will know Alice's password [#fapop]_. Then Alice's client issues the `STAT` command to know the number of messages that are stored in her mailbox. It then retrieves and deletes the first message of the mailbox.
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../../protocols/email.rst:482
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Footnotes
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../../protocols/email.rst:483
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It could be surprising that the `To:` is not mandatory inside an email message. While most email messages will contain this header line an email that does not contain a `To:` header line and that relies on the `bcc:` to specify the recipient is valid as well.
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../../protocols/email.rst:485
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The list of all standard email header lines may be found at http://www.iana.org/assignments/message-headers/message-header-index.html
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../../protocols/email.rst:487
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During the last years, many Internet Service Providers, campus and enterprise networks have deployed SMTP extensions :rfc:`4954` on their MSAs. These extensions force the MUAs to be authenticated before the MSA accepts an email message from the MUA.
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../../protocols/email.rst:489
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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`.
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../../protocols/email.rst:491
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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.
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../../protocols/email.rst:493
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:rfc:`1939` defines the APOP authentication scheme that is not vulnerable to such attacks.
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