Mutt (email client)

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Mutt
Mutt Logo
Mutt.png
Mutt in action
Original author(s)Michael Elkins
Developer(s)Kevin McCarthy
Initial release1995; 26 years ago (1995)
Stable release
2.1.3[1] (September 10, 2021; 13 days ago (2021-09-10))
Repository
Written inC[2]
Operating systemCross-platform
TypeEmail client
LicenseGPL-2.0-or-later[3]
Websitewww.mutt.org Edit this at Wikidata

Mutt is a text-based email client for Unix-like systems. It was originally written by Michael Elkins in 1995 and released under the GNU General Public License version 2 or any later version.[3]

The Mutt slogan is "All mail clients suck. This one just sucks less."[4]

Operation[]

Mutt supports most mail storing formats (notably both mbox and Maildir) and protocols (POP3, IMAP, etc.). It also includes MIME support, notably full PGP/GPG and S/MIME integration.

Mutt was originally designed as a Mail User Agent (MUA) and relied on locally accessible mailbox and sendmail infrastructure. According to the Mutt homepage "though written from scratch, Mutt's initial interface was based largely on the ELM mail client". New to Mutt were message scoring and threading capabilities. Support for fetching and sending email via various protocols such as POP3, IMAP and SMTP was added later. However, Mutt still relies on external tools for composing and filtering messages.

Mutt has hundreds of configuration directives and commands. It allows for changing all the key bindings and making keyboard macros for complex actions, as well as the colors and the layout of most of the interface. Through variants of a concept known as "hooks", many of its settings can be changed based on criteria such as current mailbox or outgoing message recipients. Mutt supports an optional sidebar, similar to those often found in graphical mail clients. There are also many patches and extensions available that add functionality, such as NNTP support.

Mutt is fully controlled with the keyboard, and has support for mail conversation threading, meaning one can easily move around long discussions such as in mailing lists. New messages are composed with an external text editor, unlike pine, which embeds its own editor known as pico.

Mutt is capable of efficiently searching mail stores by calling on mail indexing tools such as Notmuch,[5][6] and many people recommend Mutt be used this way.[7] Alternatively, users can search their mail stores from Mutt by calling grep via a Bash script.[8]

Mutt is often used by security professionals or security-conscious users because of its smaller attack surface compared with other clients that ship with a web browser rendering engine or a JavaScript interpreter.[9] In relation to Transport Layer Security, Mutt can be configured to trust certificates on first use, and not to use older, less secure versions of the Transport Layer Security protocol.[10]

Versions[]

From most recent to oldest:[11]

  • 2.1.3 was released on September 10, 2021. This was a bug-fix release, for IMAP users.
  • 2.1.2 was released on August 24, 2021. This was a bug-fix release, fixing a potential data-loss IMAP bug and other issues.
  • 2.1.1 was released on July 12, 2021. This was a bug-fix release, fixing some redraw issues and a problem with the new List Menu for mbox mailboxes.
  • 2.1.0 was released on June 12, 2021. This release had new features and bug fixes.
  • 2.0.7 was released on May 4, 2021. This was a bug-fix release, fixing a $imap_qresync VANISHED handling bug, a crash when using an encrypted -H template file, and a couple other small issues.
  • 2.0.6 was released on January 21, 2021. This was a bug-fix release, with some cleanup and small fixes.
  • 2.0.5 was released on January 21, 2021. This was a bug-fix release, fixing a few memory leaks, including CVE-2021-3181.
  • 2.0.4 was released on December 30, 2020. This was a bug-fix release, fixing a mbox large-file support bug, and a sprinkle of other issues.
  • 2.0.3 was released on December 4, 2020. This was a bug-fix release, fixing a possible crash bug along with several other issues.
  • 2.0.2 was released on November 20, 2020. This was an important bug-fix release, addressing CVE-2020-28896.
  • 2.0.1 was released on November 14, 2020. This was a bug-fix release, fixing a compilation issue on some platforms.
  • 2.0.0 was released on November 7, 2020. This release had new features, bug fixes, and a few backward incompatible changes.
  • 1.14.7 was released on August 29, 2020. This was a bug-fix release, fixing a variety of small issues.
  • 1.14.6 was released on July 11, 2020. This was a bug-fix release, fixing an error resetting access-time for relative path mailboxes
  • 1.14.5 was released on July 11, 2020. This fixes a regression when using $tunnel to connect to a preauthenticated IMAP connection.
  • 1.14.4 was released on June 18, 2020. This was an important bug-fix release. It fixed a possible machine-in-the-middle response injection attack when using STARTTLS with IMAP, POP3, and SMTP (CVE-2020-14954).
  • 1.14.3 was released on June 14, 2020. This was an important bug-fix release. It fixed a possible IMAP fcc/postpone machine-in-the-middle attack (CVE-2020-14093). It also fixed some GnuTLS certificate prompt issues.
  • 1.14.2 was released on May 25, 2020. This was a bug-fix release, fixing a few prompt buffer-size issues and adding a potential DoS mitigation.
  • 1.14.1 was released on May 16, 2020. This was a bug-fix release, fixing a documentation build issue and a few other small bugs.
  • 1.14.0 was released on May 2, 2020. This release had new features and bug fixes.
  • 1.13.5 was released on March 28, 2020. This was a bug-fix release, fixing a use-after-free bug, and a couple format string processing bugs.
  • 1.13.4 was released on February 15, 2020. This was a bug-fix release, fixing a possible memory corruption bug when syncing imap mailboxes, improving large-threaded mailbox opening speed, and reverting $ssl_force_tls to defualt unset.
  • 1.13.3 was released on January 12, 2020. This was a bug-fix release, fixing exit screen handling and a possible segfault on imap-logout-all.
  • 1.13.2 was released on December 18, 2019. This was a bug-fix release, reverting an incorrect cleanup chang e to mutt_dotlock made in 1.13.0.
  • 1.13.1 was released on December 14, 2019. This was a bug-fix release, fixing two crash bugs involving IMAP and the postpone menu. It also reverted by default the 1.13.0 sidebar display changes.
  • 1.13.0 was released on November 30, 2019. This release had new features and bug fixes.
  • 1.12.2 was released on September 21, 2019. This was a bug-fix release, fixing file monitor compilation on older systems, and application/pgp-encrypted attachment handling for sent mails.
  • 1.12.1 was released on June 15, 2019. This was a bug-fix release, fixing issues with $forward_attachments, IMAP new mail detection, IMAP fcc'ing, and a build issue on OpenBSD. Additionally, $fcc_before_send was added.
  • 1.12.0 was released on May 25, 2019. This release had new features and bug fixes.
  • 1.11.4 was released on March 13, 2019. This was a bug-fix release, fixing a Gmail $trash bug that could end up deleting incorrect messages.
  • 1.11.3 was released on February 1, 2019. This was a bug-fix release, fixing compilation with LibreSSL and various other bug fixes.
  • 1.11.2 was released on January 7, 2019. This was a bug-fix release, fixing compilation with the latest OpenSSL version and various other bug fixes.
  • 1.11.1 was released on December 1, 2018 (the "A Chorus Line" release). This was a bug-fix release, fixing a crash in the new $imap_qresync code.
  • 1.11.0 was released on November 25, 2018. This release had new features and bug fixes.
  • 1.10.1 was released on July 16, 2018. This was an important bug-fix release, fixing a code injection a couple path traversal vulnerabilities.
  • 1.10.0 was released on May 19, 2018. This release had new features and bug fixes.

See also[]

References[]

  1. ^ "The Mutt E-Mail Client". Stable. Retrieved 13 September 2021.
  2. ^ "The mutt Open Source Project on Ohloh : Languages Page". Retrieved 2013-03-22.
  3. ^ Jump up to: a b "COPYRIGHT file". Archived from the original on 2016-03-05. Retrieved 2016-04-08. either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
  4. ^ Elkins, Michael R.; Blosser, Jeremy (2008-06-08). "The Mutt E-Mail Client". Retrieved 2008-06-08.
  5. ^ "notmuch-mutt". notmuchmail.org. Retrieved 2018-11-22.
  6. ^ "Searchingmail · Wiki · Mutt Project / mutt". GitLab. Retrieved 2018-11-22.
  7. ^ Lunduke, Bryan (2016-07-06). "Who needs a GUI? How to live in a Linux terminal". Network World. Retrieved 2020-01-13.
  8. ^ Rankin, Kyle (2008-12-01). "Hack and / - Mutt and Virtual Folders". Linux Journal. Retrieved 2016-11-23.
  9. ^ "Why Security Experts Are Using an Ancient Email Format in 2015". 2020-01-13. Retrieved 2015-09-07.
  10. ^ "GPG / Mutt / Gmail". Retrieved 2015-09-14.
  11. ^ "The Mutt E-Mail Client". Mutt. July 12, 2021. Retrieved August 5, 2021.

External links[]

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