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Re: [ietf-dkim] DKIM Interoperability Event notes

2007-11-09 06:34:37
Charles Lindsey wrote:

Surely, t=y will be used in one of two scenarios:

1. Someone is intending to roll out DKIM, and is trying it out. He is not sure whether he has implemented it right, so it may fail.

But in that case there will be no SSP record, or if there is one it will say "we do not sign (yet)".

2. An existing DKIM user is rolling out a new algorithm. As before, he may get it wrong and the signatures may fail.

That might be GOOD GUY scenarios.  How about the EXPLOITED scenarios?

With those two provisos, the existing rule, to ignore any failed t=y signature (as though there had been no signature) makes perfectly good sense.

hahahahahaha. :-) Sorry. I just don't see how its not seen that what you think is GOOD can also be BAD. :-)

And, answering another point that was made, it may make good sense to report back to the signer on t=y signatures that failed, so that he can fix his bug. A t=y user can reasonably expect to receive such reports. OTOH, without a t=y attempts to regularly report failures would amount to harassment, and are a Bad Thing.

Thats a different issue, but it highlights even further why something like t=y should not be taken lightly.

What is to stop someone, for the sake of example, take cisco.com, and create a forged messages complete all the DKIM markings, and does so in an highly efficient manner by wasting no time in creating or trying to create a fake hash, and just create a fast random junk hash and blast the world with spam and/or malicious eViruses?

Is this not familiar today with/without DKIM?

If DKIM/SSP is suppose to help some DOMAINS here, then it is important that t=y is not abused and/or forgotten. For the SAKE of the domain own reputation, it is in its ADVANTAGE and BEST INTEREST that it is removed as soon as possible. Never mind the "GOOD GUY" usage, it is the BAD GUY exploitation I am worry about.

I don't want to waste alot of time adding DKIM/SSP to our own outgoing mail, only to have exploiters FORGE our mail because we have a t=y. Once we remove the t=y, I expect to be protected when this FORGED mail hits DKIM/SSP compliant sites. By keeping in there, I am not doing myself a favorite. I would think all HV domains would agree that the expense in adding DKIM requires that they don't reduce their investment by exposing t=y for any prolonged period.

All I ask is for better clarification on this t=y and to highlight its danger and should be used with extreme limits in scope and time.

--
Sincerely

Hector Santos, CTO
http://www.santronics.com
http://santronics.blogspot.com

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