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Re: [Asrg] Third party DKIM signatures

2006-04-24 13:25:07

On Apr 24, 2006, at 11:59 AM, Jim Fenton wrote:

John R Levine wrote:
DKIM lets anyone sign any message, with no necessary connection between the signing domain and the domain in any other header such as From: or Sender:. By third-party signatures we mean signatures that don't match the From: or don't match the Sender:, or don't match something else.

The definition in the current SSP draft is that a third-party signature is a signature that doesn't match the From:. There is no reference to Sender: or "something else".

This detail is still open, as SSP is at an early stage of development where details covered in the SSP raise concerns.

The semantics as well as definition of third party signatures are, to put it mildly, somewhat unclear. Some thought or actual experiments with such signatures could be helpful.

I have done a lot of thinking about this; other thought or experiments welcome. Given that SSP is the next document up for discussion in the DKIM WG, I think this has progressed beyond "research", and I don't think it's a good idea to fragment discussion between this mailing list and that one.

The DKIM WG are dealing with the Base draft and there is a desire to postpone SSP related discussions. Similar concepts discussed here should not cause any fragmentation at this time.

Concepts dealing with both DoS and message replay abuse concerns could be found with a strategy to make associations between the originating source (from/sender/resent-from/resent-sender) and the signing-domain. Associations are practical for a substantial portion of the email traffic (including DKIM related traffic) without incurring a high level of DNS transactions while also providing a DoS protection strategy. The current draft SSP draft neglects to offer such associations or protective strategies.

This draft offers a possible approach.
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-otis-smtp-name-path-00.txt


What is not covered in this example is a specific association between an originating source and a DKIM signature. This association is assumed to provide both the third-party EHLO _and_ DKIM signature authorization list. Purists may desire a specific PTR list such as _tps._smtp.<example.com> to define an explicit list of what domain is allowed to sign messages for a specific domain and not just transmit (if that really matters). A special domain label was also not created to indicate no email is allowed. This could be a domain of '-.' that indication no mail association, for example. A list, in addition to making explicit associations, also defines the nature of list, negating a need for the current SSP syntax that does this sans any associations.

Rather than raising issues specific to just DKIM, this strategy relates to a broader class of emails, while also providing DKIM relevant protective strategies.

-Doug







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