email.errors.HeaderParseError if base64url is used

[guettli]

BPO	12489
Nosy	@warsaw, @amauryfa, @bitdancer, @phmc, @iritkatriel
Files	62b280b61de7.diff 732e7d4515c0.diff

^{Note: these values reflect the state of the issue at the time it was migrated and might not reflect the current state.}

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GitHub fields:

assignee = None
closed_at = None
created_at = <Date 2011-07-04.14:38:19.681>
labels = ['type-bug', 'expert-email', '3.10', '3.11', 'library', '3.9']
title = 'email.errors.HeaderParseError if base64url is used'
updated_at = <Date 2021-12-13.23:49:55.369>
user = 'https://bugs.python.org/guettli'

bugs.python.org fields:

activity = <Date 2021-12-13.23:49:55.369>
actor = 'iritkatriel'
assignee = 'none'
closed = False
closed_date = None
closer = None
components = ['Library (Lib)', 'email']
creation = <Date 2011-07-04.14:38:19.681>
creator = 'guettli'
dependencies = []
files = ['34943', '34944']
hgrepos = ['239', '240']
issue_num = 12489
keywords = ['patch']
message_count = 7.0
messages = ['139776', '139778', '139793', '139855', '216690', '216705', '408500']
nosy_count = 7.0
nosy_names = ['barry', 'guettli', 'amaury.forgeotdarc', 'ctheune', 'r.david.murray', 'pconnell', 'iritkatriel']
pr_nums = []
priority = 'normal'
resolution = None
stage = None
status = 'open'
superseder = None
type = 'behavior'
url = 'https://bugs.python.org/issue12489'
versions = ['Python 3.9', 'Python 3.10', 'Python 3.11']

Linked PRs

• gh-56698: Fix base64-url parsing errors in email headers #136830

[guettli]

from email.header import decode_header
decode_header('=?iso-8859-1?B?QW5tZWxkdW5nIE5ldHphbnNjaGx1c3MgU_xkcmluZzNwLmpwZw==?=')

Traceback (most recent call last):
 File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
 File "/usr/lib64/python2.6/email/header.py", line 101, in decode_header
 raise HeaderParseError
email.errors.HeaderParseError

thunderbird is able to decode the header:
"Anmeldung Netzanschluss Südring3p.jpg"

According to Peter Otten base64url encoding was used:

My question in the newsgroup:
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/browse_thread/thread/9cf9ccd4109481cc/9f76bd627676b5f1?show_docid=9f76bd627676b5f1

[guettli]

This happens on Python3:
root@ubuntu1004devel64:~# python3
Python 3.1.2 (r312:79147, Sep 27 2010, 09:57:50) 
[GCC 4.4.3] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> from email.header import decode_header
>>> decode_header('=?iso-8859-1?B?QW5tZWxkdW5nIE5ldHphbnNjaGx1c3MgU_xkcmluZzNwLmpwZw==?=')
Traceback (most recent call last):
 File "/usr/lib/python3.1/email/header.py", line 98, in decode_header
 word = email.base64mime.decode(encoded_string)
 File "/usr/lib/python3.1/email/base64mime.py", line 112, in decode
 return a2b_base64(string.encode('raw-unicode-escape'))
binascii.Error: Incorrect padding

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

Traceback (most recent call last):
 File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
 File "/usr/lib/python3.1/email/header.py", line 100, in decode_header
 raise HeaderParseError('Base64 decoding error')
email.errors.HeaderParseError: Base64 decoding error

[amauryfa]

This gives the correct result:
decode_header('=?iso-8859-1?B?QW5tZWxkdW5nIE5ldHphbnNjaGx1c3MgU/xkcmluZzNwLmpwZw==?=')
(I replaced _ with /)

The header was probably generated by a variant of the base64 encoding, like this one: http://www.doughellmann.com/PyMOTW/base64/#url-safe-variations

Does this header comes from a real message? How was it generated?

[guettli]

I received this email. Here is the creator:

X-Mailer: CommuniGate Pro MAPI Connector 1.52.53.10/1.53.10.1

[ctheune]

So, in addition to "+/" and "-" there are quite a few base64 variants. Worst thing: there are the two ambigious variants "-" and "_-", even though "_-" supposedly is "non-standard" for its use.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base64

The shortest fix I can see would be to not use binascii directly from the email module but go through the base64 module (as pointed out by the blogpost) and call the urlsafe version. That should catch both cases.

Preparing a patch right now.

[bitdancer]

The patch looks good. I'd like the comment to say "We use urlsafe_b64decode here because some mailers apparently use the urlsafe b64 alphabet, and urlsafe_b64decode will correctly decode both the urlsafe and regular alphabets".

Also, the new header parser doesn't handle this case either, and furthermore it doesn't handle binascii errors at all (my comment in the code indicates I didn't think it could ever raise there). The fact that it doesn't handle the error at all can be considered a different issue, but it would be nice to add the same decode fix (and a test in test_email/test_headerregistry.py) for the new header parser. Here's one way to reproduce the issue:

>>> from email import message_from_string as mfs
>>> from email.policy import default
>>> m = mfs("From: =?iso-8859-1?B?QW5tZWxkdW5nIE5ldHphbnNjaGx1c3MgU_xkcmluZzNwLmpwZw==?=\n\n", policy=default)
>>> m['From']
Traceback (most recent call last):
 File "/home/rdmurray/python/p34/Lib/email/_encoded_words.py", line 109, in decode_b
 return base64.b64decode(padded_encoded, validate=True), defects
 File "/home/rdmurray/python/p34/Lib/base64.py", line 89, in b64decode
 raise binascii.Error('Non-base64 digit found')
binascii.Error: Non-base64 digit found

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

Traceback (most recent call last):
 File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
 File "/home/rdmurray/python/p34/Lib/email/message.py", line 391, in __getitem__
 return self.get(name)
 File "/home/rdmurray/python/p34/Lib/email/message.py", line 471, in get
 return self.policy.header_fetch_parse(k, v)
 File "/home/rdmurray/python/p34/Lib/email/policy.py", line 145, in header_fetch_parse
 return self.header_factory(name, ''.join(value.splitlines()))
 File "/home/rdmurray/python/p34/Lib/email/headerregistry.py", line 583, in __call__
 return self[name](name, value)
 File "/home/rdmurray/python/p34/Lib/email/headerregistry.py", line 194, in __new__
 cls.parse(value, kwds)
 File "/home/rdmurray/python/p34/Lib/email/headerregistry.py", line 334, in parse
 kwds['parse_tree'] = address_list = cls.value_parser(value)
 File "/home/rdmurray/python/p34/Lib/email/headerregistry.py", line 325, in value_parser
 address_list, value = parser.get_address_list(value)
 File "/home/rdmurray/python/p34/Lib/email/_header_value_parser.py", line 2313, in get_address_list
 token, value = get_address(value)
 File "/home/rdmurray/python/p34/Lib/email/_header_value_parser.py", line 2290, in get_address
 token, value = get_group(value)
 File "/home/rdmurray/python/p34/Lib/email/_header_value_parser.py", line 2246, in get_group
 token, value = get_display_name(value)
 File "/home/rdmurray/python/p34/Lib/email/_header_value_parser.py", line 2072, in get_display_name
 token, value = get_phrase(value)
 File "/home/rdmurray/python/p34/Lib/email/_header_value_parser.py", line 1747, in get_phrase
 token, value = get_word(value)
 File "/home/rdmurray/python/p34/Lib/email/_header_value_parser.py", line 1728, in get_word
 token, value = get_atom(value)
 File "/home/rdmurray/python/p34/Lib/email/_header_value_parser.py", line 1645, in get_atom
 token, value = get_encoded_word(value)
 File "/home/rdmurray/python/p34/Lib/email/_header_value_parser.py", line 1421, in get_encoded_word
 text, charset, lang, defects = _ew.decode('=?' + tok + '?=')
 File "/home/rdmurray/python/p34/Lib/email/_encoded_words.py", line 166, in decode
 bstring, defects = _cte_decoders[cte](bstring)
 File "/home/rdmurray/python/p34/Lib/email/_encoded_words.py", line 124, in decode_b
 raise AssertionError("unexpected binascii.Error")
AssertionError: unexpected binascii.Error

[iritkatriel]

Reproduced on 3.11:

>>> from email.header import decode_header
>>> decode_header('=?iso-8859-1?B?QW5tZWxkdW5nIE5ldHphbnNjaGx1c3MgU_xkcmluZzNwLmpwZw==?=')
Traceback (most recent call last):
 File "/Users/iritkatriel/src/cpython-1/Lib/email/header.py", line 126, in decode_header
 word = email.base64mime.decode(encoded_string)
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
 File "/Users/iritkatriel/src/cpython-1/Lib/email/base64mime.py", line 112, in decode
 return a2b_base64(string.encode('raw-unicode-escape'))
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
binascii.Error: Invalid base64-encoded string: number of data characters (49) cannot be 1 more than a multiple of 4

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

Traceback (most recent call last):
 File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
 File "/Users/iritkatriel/src/cpython-1/Lib/email/header.py", line 128, in decode_header
 raise HeaderParseError('Base64 decoding error')
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
email.errors.HeaderParseError: Base64 decoding error