Re: Email Handling and Manipulation Question 8

[Dan Kelly]

Which of the following hold true for MIME boundaries specified by the
boundary field in a
Content-Type header? (Choose 3)

A. Boundaries must be at least 8 characters in length
B. Boundaries must be used to separate MIME segments by prefixing them
with two
hyphens (e.g.: --abcdefghi) to begin the segment and both prefixing
and appending
two hyphens (for example, --abcdefghi--) to end the segment
C. Boundaries must be unique in a MIME e-mail
D. Boundaries cannot be embedded within other boundaries
E. The actual text used for a boundary doesn’t matter



Some one please explain Boundaries.

[Alex Stetsenko]

Seems like C, D, E based on the answer to question #4.

[Dan Kelly]

The correct answers are B, C and E. Boundaries are a critical part of
sending MIME e-mails.
Although there is no official restriction on the length of a boundary,
there are significant
consequences to a poor boundary choice. Because boundaries are simply
plain text strings
within the e-mail, it is very important that their value never appear
within the actual body of
one of the MIME segments. For instance, consider the potential
disaster that a boundary of
John, although technically valid, would cause if someone named John
signed his e-mail --
John: the receiving e-mail client would parse that signature as the
start of a new MIME
segment and, most likely, completely misinterpret the contents of the
e-mail.