Pine Email Header Analysis: Complete Description

Nowadays, emails are the most import means of cross-communication between the users. To have a successful communication exchange of emails is very important. However, there are various email applications available that a user can use to avail emailing service. Pine Mail is one such platform. It provides all the basic services offered by any other email application. Therefore, when a user receives an email along with message body some other important information i.e. Pine email header is also received by the recipient. This Email Header gives all the relevant information related to that particular email. However, most of the users do not have knowledge about the email header, but it is really important from forensic point of view.

With the help of Pine mail header, a user can have a complete knowledge of the particular email. It is very useful in catching a culprit or to solve a difficult case. In the following segment, we will learn, how to open & view Pine email header and a complete analysis of it.

View & Open Pine Email Header

Follow the steps given below to View Pine email header:

• First of all, open Pine email application
• Now, click on the message for which you want to view the full email header
• After that, press 'H' key and view the complete email header

If the above procedure does not work well, then follow the steps given below:

• Go to the start window of Pine application
• Now, for Setup, press 'S' key
• Press 'C' to open Configuration
• Now, go to the Advanced Command Preferences section
• After that, type an X for the enable-full-header-cmd feature
• Then, to exit configuration, type E and to save changes, type Y
• Now, again open the message and press 'H' to view complete header

Analysis of Each Attribute of Pine Email Header

Now, in this segment of the post, a complete analysis of each attribute of a header part of any email message present on Pine Mail account:

Return-Path: This attribute of Pine email shows the address of the email where the message notification is sent back. This email address is used by the mail server to send a message to the particular email address regardless of the message is delivered or not.

Received-from: The most crucial header part of Pine email client from email header forensic perspective. The main aim of this field is to display the list of all mail server through which a message routed to reach a particular destination. One can start analyzing this attribute from top to bottom. It displays the sender's mail server IP address and IP address of all another mail server through which it reaches to the receiver with its associated date and time.

Date: It is the most simple and easy-to-understand attribute from the name. It displays the date and time at which the email message has been received. In addition, it incorporates the complete detail related to the composed date and time of the message.

From: It indicates the complete detail of the sender along with email address who has sent that specific message on Pine email client.

Subject: It gives an idea to the receiver that what is the purpose of this email or what it actually contains. It is simply a subject line that shows a reason to the recipient to open that particular email message.

To: This attribute of email header shows the email address of the receiver to whom that particular message is sent. In addition, it indicates the full email id of the receiver of the message.

Reply-to: It is the header which is added by the sender in the email. It addresses the email id at which reply is to be sent back. However, when the user clicks on "reply", the value in the Reply-To field should be used as the recipient of the newly composed email. Moreover, it cannot be used by any server. It is for client use only.

Message-id: Each email in the Pine Mail is assigned a unique message identity. It is made up of the combination of number and alphabets and with some web extensions. However, this message id will uniquely identify the each email message separately.

MIME Version: It is the field that will display the version of MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension) used in each and every email message. MIME permits users to send a variety of data files such as audio, video, images, etc.

X-Mailer: It is that attribute of the email header that identifies the software application used by the sender while sending an email message.

Conclusion

Pine email header analysis plays the vital role in the investigation of any cybercrime related case done by the forensic investigator. Hence, this is the post, in which we have discussed the complete description of each every attribute of Pine mail Header. All this information about the attributes can be very helpful for the forensic investigator in finding evidence from the suspect Pine account. An investigator can use this information to find the culprit easily. Moreover, The Forensic Email Search Software helps to analyze the Pine email header in much better way.