I just got a spam email dated 1970/1/1. I laughed, but then thought about it a bit more. I get these from time to time - always spam - and assumed they did this to stand out in your inbox.
But I'm curious how this can happen?
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1 Answer
1970/1/1 is the Unix epoch start time, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_time .
Unix and Linux systems count the time in seconds starting at 1970/1/1, probably, when no date has been set at all in the mail headers, this starting time is set by default by the MTA or showed by default by your mail client.
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probably, when no date has been set at all in the mail headers-- so dates are spoofable?– DrewFeb 22, 2011 at 13:07 -
@Andrew: Most emails have several date stamps. The one displayed by your mail client is the
Dateheader, which is spoofable easily. It's just a piece of text added by the sender's mail program, after all. (The timestamps inReceivedheaders are added by the mail servers themselves, so they are more reliable, but theReceivedheaders can themselves be faked.) Use your mail program's "View source" or "View headers" command to see all headers. Feb 22, 2011 at 14:01 -
@andrew: The entire header is spoofable. Unencrypted email is the definition of insecure. Feb 22, 2011 at 14:37
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The only thing you can trust is the last received entry. Everything else is spoofable.– hlovdalFeb 24, 2011 at 0:05