mail-parser is not only a wrapper for email Python Standard Library. It give you an easy way to pass from raw mail to Python object that you can use in your code. It's the key module of SpamScope.
mail-parser can parse Outlook email format (.msg). To use this feature, you need to install libemail-outlook-message-perl package. For Debian based systems:
$ apt-get install libemail-outlook-message-perl
For more details:
$ apt-cache show libemail-outlook-message-perl
mail-parser supports Python 3.
mail-parser can be downloaded, used, and modified free of charge. It is available under the Apache 2 license.
If you find this project useful, you can support it by donating any amount you want. All donations are greatly appreciated and help maintain and develop the project.
Bitcoin Address: bc1qxhz3tghztpjqdt7atey68s344wvmugtl55tm32
mail-parser takes as input a raw email and generates a parsed object. The properties of this object are the same name of RFC headers:
- bcc
- cc
- date
- delivered_to
- from_ (not
frombecause is a keyword of Python) - message_id
- received
- reply_to
- subject
- to
There are other properties to get:
- body
- body html
- body plain
- headers
- attachments
- sender IP address
- to domains
- timezone
The attachments property is a list of objects. Every object has the following keys:
- binary: it's true if the attachment is a binary
- charset
- content_transfer_encoding
- content-disposition
- content-id
- filename
- mail_content_type
- payload: attachment payload in base64
To get custom headers you should replace "-" with "_".
Example for header X-MSMail-Priority:
$ mail.X_MSMail_Priority
The received header is parsed and splitted in hop. The fields supported are:
- by
- date
- date_utc
- delay (between two hop)
- envelope_from
- envelope_sender
- for
- from
- hop
- with
mail-parser can detect defect in mail:
- defects: mail with some not compliance RFC part
All properties have a JSON and raw property that you can get with:
- name_json
- name_raw
Example:
$ mail.to (Python object)
$ mail.to_json (JSON)
$ mail.to_raw (raw header)
The command line tool use the JSON format.
These defects can be used to evade the antispam filter. An example are the mails with a malformed boundary that can hide a not legitimate epilogue (often malware). This library can take these epilogues.
Fedele Mantuano: LinkedIn
Clone repository
git clone https://github.com/SpamScope/mail-parser.git
and install mail-parser with setup.py:
$ cd mail-parser
$ python setup.py install
or use pip:
$ pip install mail-parser
Import mailparser module:
import mailparser
mail = mailparser.parse_from_bytes(byte_mail)
mail = mailparser.parse_from_file(f)
mail = mailparser.parse_from_file_msg(outlook_mail)
mail = mailparser.parse_from_file_obj(fp)
mail = mailparser.parse_from_string(raw_mail)
Then you can get all parts
mail.attachments: list of all attachments
mail.body
mail.date: datetime object in UTC
mail.defects: defect RFC not compliance
mail.defects_categories: only defects categories
mail.delivered_to
mail.from_
mail.get_server_ipaddress(trust="my_server_mail_trust")
mail.headers
mail.mail: tokenized mail in a object
mail.message: email.message.Message object
mail.message_as_string: message as string
mail.message_id
mail.received
mail.subject
mail.text_plain: only text plain mail parts in a list
mail.text_html: only text html mail parts in a list
mail.text_not_managed: all not managed text (check the warning logs to find content subtype)
mail.to
mail.to_domains
mail.timezone: returns the timezone, offset from UTC
mail.mail_partial: returns only the mains parts of emails
It's possible to write the attachments on disk with the method:
mail.write_attachments(base_path)
If you installed mailparser with pip or setup.py you can use it with command-line.
These are all swithes:
usage: mailparser [-h] (-f FILE | -s STRING | -k)
[-l {CRITICAL,ERROR,WARNING,INFO,DEBUG,NOTSET}] [-j] [-b]
[-a] [-r] [-t] [-dt] [-m] [-u] [-c] [-d] [-o]
[-i Trust mail server string] [-p] [-z] [-v]
Wrapper for email Python Standard Library
optional arguments:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
-f FILE, --file FILE Raw email file (default: None)
-s STRING, --string STRING
Raw email string (default: None)
-k, --stdin Enable parsing from stdin (default: False)
-l {CRITICAL,ERROR,WARNING,INFO,DEBUG,NOTSET}, --log-level {CRITICAL,ERROR,WARNING,INFO,DEBUG,NOTSET}
Set log level (default: WARNING)
-j, --json Show the JSON of parsed mail (default: False)
-b, --body Print the body of mail (default: False)
-a, --attachments Print the attachments of mail (default: False)
-r, --headers Print the headers of mail (default: False)
-t, --to Print the to of mail (default: False)
-dt, --delivered-to Print the delivered-to of mail (default: False)
-m, --from Print the from of mail (default: False)
-u, --subject Print the subject of mail (default: False)
-c, --receiveds Print all receiveds of mail (default: False)
-d, --defects Print the defects of mail (default: False)
-o, --outlook Analyze Outlook msg (default: False)
-i Trust mail server string, --senderip Trust mail server string
Extract a reliable sender IP address heuristically
(default: None)
-p, --mail-hash Print mail fingerprints without headers (default:
False)
-z, --attachments-hash
Print attachments with fingerprints (default: False)
-sa, --store-attachments
Store attachments on disk (default: False)
-ap ATTACHMENTS_PATH, --attachments-path ATTACHMENTS_PATH
Path where store attachments (default: /tmp)
-v, --version show program's version number and exit
It takes as input a raw mail and generates a parsed object.
Example:
$ mailparser -f example_mail -jThis example will show you the tokenized mail in a JSON pretty format.
From raw mail to parsed mail.
Exceptions hierarchy of mail-parser:
MailParserError: Base MailParser Exception
|
\โโ MailParserOutlookError: Raised with Outlook integration errors
|
\โโ MailParserEnvironmentError: Raised when the environment is not correct
|
\โโ MailParserOSError: Raised when there is an OS error
|
\โโ MailParserReceivedParsingError: Raised when a received header cannot be parsed
The first step is to install the development environment:
$ python3.10 -m virtualenv venv
$ source venv/bin/activate
$ pip install -e ".[dev, test]"
The second step is to run the tests:
$ make unittest
Then you can try to run the command line tool:
$ mail-parser -f tests/mails/mail_malformed_3 -j
If all is ok, you can start to develop.
