Re: Thoughts on Message-ID generation

[Stainless Steel Rat <ratinox@peorth.gweep.net>]

* "David A. Cobb" <superbiskit@home.com>  on Thu, 01 Mar 2001
| I'm not sure!  It's about like saying every boson in the universe is an
| object.  So what!  How many bits do we need to count all of them?

More that the idea of treating every bit of information as an object for
all purpose as a panacea is not a good idea.

[...]
| Once we agree on how do I uniquely identify ME,

The fully-qualified domain name of a host is required to be unique.  If it
is not then the host is misconfigured.  Your login on that host is also
required to be unique.  If it is not then accounts are improperly managed.
The time you send a message from a host is close to unique; that run
through MD4 or MD5 along with some random data will be unique.  If you put
them all together you get a very high probability unique identifier,
barring someone deliberately attempting to duplicate it.

Wait... Gnus already does most of that.  I'm not sure if it does the hash
(time + random) bit or just hash (time).

If you insist on going overboard, mash the whole message through MD5 and
use that as the Message-ID string or part of it.

I dunnow about CORBA's security, or lack thereof.  It really isn't an issue
here.  Message-ID is was never intended to be "secure".
-- 
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