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View Full Version : Odd emails from mycncuk, blank emails with no subject title



Voicecoil
29-09-2019, 06:36 PM
I've had 2 blank emails with no subject title in the last 24 hours seeming to come from this forum - anyone else had one or know what they're about please?

Doddy
30-09-2019, 12:32 AM
Yup, had similar today

Lee Roberts
30-09-2019, 04:23 AM
Will look into this guy's and see what I can find.

Anyone else had any problems ?

m_c
30-09-2019, 04:09 PM
I'm guessing vB has had an update recently, as I've noticed a few oddities since the email format changed.

Since the format change, sometimes the quoted post in the emails has been blank, but I got some completely blank emails over the weekend which Gmail flagged as spam.

Lee Roberts
30-09-2019, 04:49 PM
I'm guessing vB has had an update recently, as I've noticed a few oddities since the email format changed.

Since the format change, sometimes the quoted post in the emails has been blank, but I got some completely blank emails over the weekend which Gmail flagged as spam.

Humm a little concerning, I'm just doing the school run and sorting dinner then I'm gonna jump on this, could you check the email headers (message source) and see if anything stands out to you, or copy the info here for me to look at ?

There hasn't been any updates to vB recently or any changes by me, but there is an update waiting for me to install, this fixes some compatibly issues with PHP 7 and I need to see what else...

I'll see what o can find out and post back shortly, cheers.

m_c
30-09-2019, 05:37 PM
Humm a little concerning, I'm just doing the school run and sorting dinner then I'm gonna jump on this, could you check the email headers (message source) and see if anything stands out to you, or copy the info here for me to look at ?

There hasn't been any updates to vB recently or any changes by me, but there is an update waiting for me to install, this fixes some compatibly issues with PHP 7 and I need to see what else...

I'll see what o can find out and post back shortly, cheers.

I've just had a look, and I must have binned the blank messages via spam as they're not in my trash.
I also had a look for some messages with blank quotes, but can't find any. I'm wondering if they're maybe a gmail formatting issue, as all message are showing quotes OK just now..

Doddy
30-09-2019, 05:39 PM
I've given Lee a couple of email headers. It's not gmail (or at least I don't think gmail sits anywhere in the loop with the emails that I received)

Lee Roberts
30-09-2019, 06:22 PM
Working on this now guys, so far cant see anything on the mail server to suggest anything, so i dont think there has been an intrusion at that level.

vB - The forum software is up to date in terms of "security" but there is an update I can install (vbulletin-4-2-5 (https://forum.vbulletin.com/forum/vbulletin-4/vbulletin-4-questions-problems-and-troubleshooting/4349766-vbulletin-4-2-5)), I cant find much info on what this fix's or introduces but I do know it will probably just be code changes to support PHP 7+...

Just gonna look at these headers now, will report back.

Lee Roberts
01-10-2019, 12:21 AM
Hi guys,

I'm still looking into this but cant find anything wrong at the mo, your email headers look fine as dose the server...

...will post back as/if I find anything.

Doddy
01-10-2019, 12:25 AM
Appreciate the support lee, I know it’s a thankless job running a site like this.

Heads up, I got another tonight around 21:59

Edit...

and...
26476

Voicecoil
01-10-2019, 10:02 AM
Aye, thanks for trying to sort this out Lee. Looking through the message source I forwarded to you I can't see anything worrying, so at the most it's a very slightly irritating bug. Oh and BTW, I got another 5 between 00:30 and 01:45 - at the exact same time as the ones Doddy got - so it looks like this is a "group email" or "all members" email problem??

AndyUK
01-10-2019, 12:30 PM
Wondering if its a broken thread notification?

There is only one thread the three of you have participated in together recently (m_c, doddy, voicecoil) - I haven't received any of these blank emails, and haven't participated, nor has lee... Easy to test if lee posts in it! ;)

Lichuan "Easy Servo" closed loop stepper question in Stepper & Servo Motors

AndyUK
01-10-2019, 12:36 PM
Also, Lee, not sure if its helpful but:

You can turn on Email logging in your vB Options.

AdminCP -> vBulletin Options -> Error Handling & Logging -> Log Emails to a File

Voicecoil
01-10-2019, 01:38 PM
Wondering if its a broken thread notification?

There is only one thread the three of you have participated in together recently (m_c, doddy, voicecoil) - I haven't received any of these blank emails, and haven't participated, nor has lee... Easy to test if lee posts in it! ;)

Lichuan "Easy Servo" closed loop stepper question in Stepper & Servo Motors

Good suggestion Andy :thumsup:

AndyUK
01-10-2019, 02:08 PM
It genuinely wouldn't surprise me if the quotation marks in the post title were causing an exception - which if anyone is smart enough to exploit could be a VB security issue :P

Voicecoil
01-10-2019, 06:37 PM
I've now had 5 emails this afternoon suggesting that Lee has posted to the Lichuan stepper thread, but I can't see any entries there ....

Doddy
01-10-2019, 06:40 PM
I've now had 5 emails this afternoon suggesting that Lee has posted to the Lichuan stepper thread, but I can't see any entries there ....

Same

Lee Roberts
01-10-2019, 07:02 PM
I was up most of the night trying to sort this out guys, sorry, I have been replying to that thread and then deleting my posts after while I test different things.

I will reply again later once i come to a conclusion, I think Andy is onto something re the quotation marks in the thread title I took these out early this morning ready to do a test i'm now about to try, I could'nt finish it this morning/today as the rest of the house woke up and school runs, babys and sleep got in the way.

Thanks for the feedback, "ill be back"...

Lee Roberts
01-10-2019, 08:20 PM
This thread has an update in the form of a new post, you found out about it first from an email in your inbox.

This message is the body part of the email and the email not only has a subject line, that subject line also contains quotation marks around the words "Easy Servo"...how cool is that?!?!

This fix was bought to you by the letter "C".

Voicecoil
01-10-2019, 08:24 PM
That seems to have solved it Lee - at last a post that agrees with the notification email - well done and thanks!

Lee Roberts
01-10-2019, 09:18 PM
That seems to have solved it Lee - at last a post that agrees with the notification email - well done and thanks!

Great will update the other thread in a mo, sorry for any inconvenience :thumsup:

Lee Roberts
01-10-2019, 11:40 PM
Appreciate the support lee, I know it’s a thankless job running a site like this.

Heads up, I got another tonight around 21:59

Edit...

and...


Cheers, although to be fair most people I help say thank you and those that don't I just except for who they are and move on :)

As a side note, on my travels I found this out:


“This message has no content.” error when viewing an email on an iPhone or iPad using the Mail app

Issue
When opening an email the message text/content isn’t displayed and is replaced with a message reading “This message has no content.”.

This is a common issue with iPhones and iPads and is known to Apple – https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5406637 – if you need assistance with your iPhone we would suggest contacting Apple directly or visiting an Apple store for assistance.

We know this wasn't the problem as I've found and fixed our local issue here but i thought i would past that on to you for future use in case it comes in handy for you.


Also, Lee, not sure if its helpful but:

You can turn on Email logging in your vB Options.

AdminCP -> vBulletin Options -> Error Handling & Logging -> Log Emails to a File

Hi Andy,

Thanks for that, I did do this early on but I also wanted to grab what the others were receiving so I had it ready rather than requesting it and potentially waiting for it to come in further down the road, I was always pretty confident the server had no issue's but you never know!

What I was sending out matched what you guys sent me:



SUCCESS
Mon, 30 Sep 2019 21:58:57 +0000
To: ********@********.***
Subject:
From: "MYCNCUK" <[email protected]>
Auto-Submitted: auto-generated
Return-Path: [email protected]
Message-ID: <********.********@www.mycncuk.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/html; charset="UTF-8"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
X-Priority: 3
X-Mailer: vBulletin Mail via PHP


Note we have no message body in the above.


It genuinely wouldn't surprise me if the quotation marks in the post title were causing an exception - which if anyone is smart enough to exploit could be a VB security issue :P

Good spot, here's what I found when I removed the quotation marks from the title:


SUCCESS
Tue, 01 Oct 2019 18:06:57 +0000
To: ********@********.***
Subject: Reply to thread 'Lichuan Easy Servo closed loop stepper question'
From: "MYCNCUK" <[email protected]>
Auto-Submitted: auto-generated
Return-Path: [email protected]
Message-ID: <********.********@www.mycncuk.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/html; charset="UTF-8"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
X-Priority: 3
X-Mailer: vBulletin Mail via PHP

Quick test message from Lee, m_c do you use an apple device by any chance ?

Cool, now we know it is something not playing nicely with quotation marks in the title, as in the above email we have data in the subject line and a message body that also contains what I posted.

I noticed that when I replied to the other thread, the notice below was being logged by the server:


PHP Parse error: syntax error, unexpected 'Easy' (T_STRING) in /includes/functions_newpost.php(1306) : eval()'d code on line 100

Looking at the code on line 1306 of the functions_newpost.php file, I didn't really learn anything that helpful:


1306 eval(iif(empty($evalemail["$touser[languageid]"]), $evalemail["-1"], $evalemail["$touser[languageid]"]));

But we did also know from the notice that "eval()'d code on line 100" had a problem, this bit of the notice is telling us that a plugin is having a problem and the troublesome code potentially lives on line 100 in one of the plugin files.

Traditionally the advice is to disable all plugins and re enable them one at a time until the problem shows up again, instead I looked at what hook locations were being used for each plugin and the most obvious one to me was the Tapatalk plugin as one of the hook locations it use's is "newpost_complete".

Looking at the code behind that function:


global $vbulletin;
if( !function_exists('tapatalk_push_reply') ){
if( file_exists(DIR.'/'.$vbulletin->options['tapatalk_directory'].'/push_hook.php') )
{
include_once(DIR.'/'.$vbulletin->options['tapatalk_directory'].'/push_hook.php');
if( function_exists('tapatalk_push_reply') )
tapatalk_push_reply($type, $post, $threadinfo);
}
}else{
tapatalk_push_reply($type, $post, $threadinfo);
}

So before I started to look deeper and potentially start chewing up their code, I just disabled the Tapatalk app and run some tests:

The first one tested if having quotation marks in the title with Tapatalk disabled worked as expected:


SUCCESS
Tue, 01 Oct 2019 18:24:46 +0000
To: ********@********.***
Subject: Reply to thread 'Lichuan "Easy Servo" closed loop stepper question'
From: "MYCNCUK" <[email protected]>
Auto-Submitted: auto-generated
Return-Path: [email protected]
Message-ID: <********.********@www.mycncuk.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
X-Priority: 3
X-Mailer: vBulletin Mail via PHP

Dear m_c,

Lee Roberts has just replied....

Sweeeeet!, I new it had been quite a while since I last checked for a Tapatalk update, sure enough there was one waiting so I grabbed that and installed it.

I re enabled Tapatalk, removed the quotation marks from the title again and made another post to said thread, I didn't get the PHP Parse notice this time and the email sent out had everything included!

Moment of truth, quotation marks added back in:


SUCCESS
Tue, 01 Oct 2019 18:42:22 +0000
To: ********@********.***
Subject: Reply to thread 'Lichuan "Easy Servo" closed loop stepper question'
From: "MYCNCUK" <[email protected]>
Auto-Submitted: auto-generated
Return-Path: [email protected]
Message-ID: <********.********@www.mycncuk.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
X-Priority: 3
X-Mailer: vBulletin Mail via PHP

Dear m_c,

Lee Roberts has just replied....

and breath.....we have a winner lol problem solved.

Thank you to you all for getting involved and helping me get to the bottom of this this, I'm also sorry for not keeping things up to date like I have previously, I'll keep it short and sweet and just say my life has been a whirlwind over the last two years and the stress has effected me quite badly, things have only just started to settle back down, hence the reason I've been more active recently.

Keep up the good work of making it your community guys, the reward for me is seeing it continue to be successful, seriously thank you :thumsup:

Lee

Kitwn
02-10-2019, 01:01 AM
Thanks for all your effort Lee, much appreciated. Now get some kip!

Kit

AndyUK
02-10-2019, 12:29 PM
And now we know that Lee is a qualified detective.... :) Nice one!