ietf-dkim
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Re: [ietf-dkim] 1193 considered harmful

2006-03-22 10:50:52

On Mar 22, 2006, at 11:03 AM, Dave Crocker wrote:

In fact, as I recall at the Cisco DKIM summit, the recommendation for
those wanting to experiment with implementations now was to use
allman-01 as the draft was expected to be in a state of flux and have
a number of further refinements over coming versions. In short,
everyone was expecting that it would change as the WG moved focus from
threats to base.

Mark,

There is a difference between noting that the IETF specification is in flux, versus predicting that the IETF will produce a final specification that breaks the ability to have a signer who uses the pre-ietf spec be validated by an implementor of the post-ietf draft.

So far, we have not modified DKIM to cause this breakage. The current proposal will cause this breakage.

We should not break the pre-ietf to post-ietf interoperability without extremely good cause.

Dave,

It should be noted that by including the hash parameter within the signature header, this provides the same level of change as that of a SHA-1 modification. This parameter indicates a new sequence is being used to develop the hash in addition to a new hash algorithm. While an older implementation will not be able to understand this modification, neither will it understand the SHA-256. The newer implementation, in an effort to remain backward compatible, could key upon the hash parameter existing or not within the header to know which sequence of hashing was used. I am not necessarily recommending this strategy, but it is one that could be use to retain the same level of breakage as was caused by the SHA change.

-Doug
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