Hi Jim,
+1, I think the paragraphs are well enough stated.
I think "forgery" is broad enough. If anything maybe change it to:
a priori indication of a problematic message.
Again, I think its cool, so +1, but if I wrote it, I would probably
change a few things:
However, the legacy of the Internet is such that not all
messages will be signed. Hence, historically, the
absence of a signature is not an a prior indication of
forgery or problematic message. In fact, it must be
expected that most messages will remain unsigned.
Note the priori typo fix. In the last sentence, I think this should be
expected even during at any adoption level, even full deployment. The
early deployment clause could erroneously suggest that its a short time
issue or that DKIM itself is a short term solution during early
development, which is not the case. In fact, I would suggest that
maximum benefit and payoff is when you at full (super majority)
deployment, which will optimize the idea in the next paragraph.
This legacy consideration opens the door for DKIM to help
protect domains. Domain may find it highly desirable
to expose or advertise the idea that they sign all ......
I took the word "Some" out because I think it is implied. By having it,
I think that is only because many are still leery of the "exclusive, I
sign all" concept. So to me, it sounds like yet another item (double
talk) attempt to minimize the high potential DKIM/SSP can offer. If you
were to follow up with a:
However, please note, this "I SIGN ALL" idea may not apply to all
domains[. | because ...]
Then it makes sense to start with Some.
But again, what you have is fine to me, +1 :-)
--
Sincerely
Hector Santos, CTO
http://www.santronics.com
http://santronics.blogspot.com
Jim Fenton wrote:
This whole thing may become a moot point with the new wording of the
second paragraph of the introduction as suggested by Arvel. It says:
However, the legacy of the Internet is such that not all messages will
be signed. Therefore, the absence of a signature is not an a priori
indication of forgery. In fact, during early phases of DKIM deployment
it must be expected that most messages will remain unsigned.
Nevertheless, some domains may find it highly desirable to advertise
that they sign all of their outgoing mail making the absence of a valid
signature a potential indication of forgery. Without a mechanism to do
so, the benefits of DKIM are limited to cases in which a valid signature
exists and cannot be extended to cases in which signatures are missing
or are invalid. Defining such a mechanism is the purpose of Sender
Signing Practices.
With the above wording, I don't think we need to put too sharp a point
on the definition of "forgery".
-Jim
Charles Lindsey wrote:
On Wed, 14 Nov 2007 23:50:17 -0000, Jim Fenton <fenton(_at_)cisco(_dot_)com>
wrote:
Douglas Otis wrote:
Introduction:
,--
| ... However, some domains may choose to sign all of their
| outgoing mail, for example, to protect their brand name. It is
| highly desirable for such domains to be able to advertise that fact
| to verifiers, and that messages claiming to be from them that do not
| have a valid signature are likely to be forgeries. This is the topic
| for sender signing practices.
'--
This statement overlooks messages forwarded by mailing-lists and the
like where a signature might become invalid.
Perhaps change "claiming to be from them" to "claiming to be directly
from them".
DKIM tries to be as path-agnostic as possible, so the word "directly" is
problematic. If it goes through a transparent (non-modifying)
forwarder, is it "directly from them"? Probably not, so this wording
understates DKIM's value.
My interpretation of "directly" in the above text is that it implies
"if this message arrives without evidence of intermediate
forwarding/mail-list-expansion/whatever, and its signature is
bad/absent, then that is a cause for immediate and grave suspicion.
But if there is evidence of such forwarding, then further
investigation of whether such forwarding might removed/broken our
original signature could be taken into account".
So if the forwarder has resigned (or even better certified that the
original sugnature was good when seen by him) then a site that is
prepared to trust the forwarder might choose to be less suspicious.
If that is the intention of "directly", then it is probably fine to
include it (or mayube something more explicit, since "directly" seems
toi have been misunderstood.
OTOH, my interpretation of "strict" means "please be suspicious if the
signature is absent/bad even if there is plausible evidence of
mangling by a forwarder".
_______________________________________________
NOTE WELL: This list operates according to
http://mipassoc.org/dkim/ietf-list-rules.html
_______________________________________________
NOTE WELL: This list operates according to
http://mipassoc.org/dkim/ietf-list-rules.html