I felt this might be of general interest, so I am making it an
open question. Primarily, this is directed to our friends at
AT&T:
The recent CERT advisory regarding sendmail has gotten me
thinking... This program is such a problem, is there a way of
replacing it? Then I remember something...
In the past, unless age is eroding my memory :-), I recall
some of the folks at AT&T mentioned the name of their mailer
(upas). I also think it was mentioned in C&B (I think it's
worthy of this moniker, like K&R!)-- not having my copy in
hand, I cannot verify this. Somewhere in my (deep-dark) past,
I believe I read a paper about it by Dr. David Presotto (I
think that's his name--I apologize if I am wrong). This
triggers a few questions:
1) Where was that paper published and is it on line somewhere?
@inproceedings{upas,
author = "David L. Presotto",
booktitle = "USENIX Conference Proceedings",
address = "Portland, OR",
year = "1985",
month = "Summer",
pages = "533--538",
title = "{\P{Upas}}---A Simpler Approach to Network Mail",
}
2) Is the source available to the general (non-AT&T) public?
Hmm. I was about to say no, but I think there's a version distributed
with Plan 9, though I'm not certain. Plan 9 is available, in source
form, quite cheaply. Plan 9 programs won't compile right out of the
box on most UNIX machines, but many aren't hard to port.
3) As an alternative, did someone do their own port that might
be available?
4) What would make it more secure than sendmail or smail?
It's very much smaller and simpler.
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