IMAP bastardized by Microsoft?

In-Reply-To: <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: Error message I don't understand
On Sun, Jan 01, 2023 at 11:26:03AM -0600, Charles Cazabon wrote:
> Pieter van Oostrum <[email protected]> wrote:
> > 
> > I tried it with my own token that I generated in Azure/Outlook, because the
> > email account that I have problems with is under my control, but it made no
> > difference.
> 
> I saw a report of a user who said they had success setting up a proxy app;
> getmail would speak normal IMAP4 to the proxy, and the proxy talked to the
> Office365 servers with whatever bastardized protocol and authentication
> Microsoft has implemented [1].
> 
> The software referred to was this:
>    https://github.com/linka-cloud/o365-imap-proxy
 
Text from that webpage:
} o365-imap-proxy is a proxy server that allows you to connect to the
} Office 365 IMAP server using PLAIN AUTH authentication.
}
} It uses the OAuth2 Password flow with the PLAIN AUTH credentials to
} obtain an access token and then uses it to authenticate to the IMAP
} server with XAUTH2.
}
} The main use case is to allow incompatible email clients and legacy
} applications to connect to the Office 365 IMAP server.

I miss "Multi Factor Authentication" in that text,
but might be wrong in expecting that there is MFA involved.


> I'm afraid I have no personal experience with it,
> as I don't have an o365 account to test with.
 
Not sure if that should be read as

   Those who are convicted to using bastard IMAP
   should provide me with such an account
   and further resources to get it supported in getmail.


Thing is that Two Factor Authentication and/or Multi Factor
Authentication gains more terrain. How will getmail cope with it?


> Charles
> 
> [1] Despite Satya Nadella's claims of Microsoft's new openness and respect for
> standards, this is very much starting to look like the Microsoft-of-old
> "embrace, extend, and extinguish" for standard mail protocols.

See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish


Groeten
Geert Stappers
-- 
Silence is hard to parse