linux-kernel - Re: What are these weird line-noise signatures?

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Message-ID: <54AB5425.3010609@hurleysoftware.com>
Date:	Mon, 05 Jan 2015 22:19:01 -0500
From:	Peter Hurley <peter@...leysoftware.com>
To:	Jeff Epler <jepler@...ythonic.net>, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: What are these weird line-noise signatures?

On 01/05/2015 10:12 PM, Jeff Epler wrote:
> I have seen similar "signatures" that have the appearance of good old
> fashioned line noise, such as in this recent message from Paul
> Zimmerman (but not in all of his messages either!):
> 
> On Tue, Jan 06, 2015 at 01:23:30AM +0000, Paul Zimmerman wrote:
> [real content snipped]
>> -- 
>> Paul
>>
>> N?????r??y????b?X??ǧv?^?){.n?+????{????zX??^W??ܨ}???Ơz?&j:+v???^G????zZ+??+zf???h???~????i???z?^^?w?????????&?)ߢ^[f??^jǫy?m??@...??^??^L0??h?^O??i^?
> (some characters were control characters and are represented with carets
> above, and my mailreader seems to have transcoded other non-ASCIIs as
> reencoded by my mailreader, but it's hard to be sure)
> 
> I have seen them from senders at various domains, and they are not some
> kind of artifact of my own mail system because they appear in the
> archives e.g., at
> 
> http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.usb.general/120149
> 
> and similarly in a 2014 message from another poster at another domain:
> [real content snipped again]
>>> Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/
>> N?????r??y????b?X??ǧv?^?) .n?+????{????zX??^W??ܨ}???Ơz?&j:+v???^G????zZ+??+zf???h???~????i???z?^^?w?????????&?)ߢ^[f??^jǫy?m??@...??^??^L0??h?^O??i^?
> 
> http://mid.gmane.org/CD2CABCB2C0A0D4682C5F8AD8401415409741D%40HKXPRD3002MB006.064d.mgd.msft.net
> 
> [not quite byte-for-byte identical, but very close!]
> 
> Does anyone know what the purpose of these footers is?  Highly
> compressed legal disclaimer, I'm guessing.

Paul's message in base64-encoded.

The scramble you see at the end when the message is decoded
is the majordomo signature added in plaintext, decoded as if
it were base64.

Regards,
Peter Hurley
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