[Dovecot] Dovecot as a smart IMAP proxy

[Marcus Rueckert]

On 2006-02-23 18:24:31 +0200, Timo Sirainen wrote:
> Do you see a use for an IMAP proxy where the proxy would be able to
> execute hooks which modify mail contents, such as transparent
> encrypting/decrypting mails, or maybe some virus-filtering? It would
> need at least some kind of IMAP command/reply parsing capabilities, so
> it might be able to do all kinds of other things.

err at least the virus scanning stuff should be handled in the MTA.
In general i dont like any proxies that modify content for me. there are
too many ways to get things wrong.

but i like the idea of writing a basic imap client. ;) you could use
that for a testsuite. :p *runs*

> Maybe one potential use case would be Cyrus Murder-like proxying to
> multiple IMAP servers to distribute the mailboxes. But that might be
> done better as an imap process plugin, or maybe as IMAP mail storage
> backend.

load balancing proxy sounds more useful yeah. 

> Anyway, the reason I'm asking this is because I was asked to add mail
> encryption/decryption capabilities to Dovecot's IMAP proxy, but I'm not
> sure what would be the best way to handle this. In any case it would be
> a plugin or a new binary which is executed instead of imap binary, but
> can I do it in a way that would actually be useful for Dovecot project
> in general?

hmm i have heard about signing proxies at the MTA layer where the mta
signs every mail of a user with a special signing only mail. i dont see
how dovecot should be able to decrypt mails unless the passphrase of the
private key and the password are the same. but that would mean storing
the password during the session in memory. hmm i dont like that idea
much. do you have more details on the general design they have in mind?

just my 2 cents

    darix

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