ietf-dkim
[Top] [All Lists]

Re: [ietf-dkim] Re: Discussing what someone said about SSP - productive?

2007-12-07 12:57:40
Steve Atkins wrote:

On Dec 7, 2007, at 10:52 AM, Michael Thomas wrote:

Steve Atkins wrote:
On Dec 7, 2007, at 10:17 AM, Michael Thomas wrote:


  It sure isn't obvious to me, and I'm afraid that I'm at the end
  of the road here as I can't figure out what set of axioms that either
  you or Dave are operating from for that not be true. From the looks
  of it, that set of axioms leads to "SSP == bad", so I again wonder
  why you're wasting your time, unless it is to prevent SSP from being
  published.

I like DKIM.

Publishing a bad (harmful or overly complex or with no actual benefit
or...) protocol tied closely to DKIM would be bad for DKIM
deployment.

Steve,

Are you comfortable with a DKIM only world, if not, what should be augmented with it to secure some basic exploitations?

Or

Are you comfortable with a DKIM only world with verifiers only treating valid signatures "more special" than the rest, including a verifier seeing a domain with all three types of messages coming in, treating these less special?

    NO signature
    Valid Signature
    Invalid Signature

Which ones are more important?

What I am pointing out is that, forget SSP, forget everything else but consider only DKIM, why should a verifier go to the trouble and cost of development to process DKIM messages when its only interested in the valid ones and ignoring the rest?

How is the domain protected with is new DKIM signer responsibility?

He is only responsible for the mail he does signs and not responsible for his domain mail he intentionally decides not to sign?

My point in all these question is that there has to be some technical protocol consistency in all this. Forget SSP, use something else, who cares! I have a hard time believing Verifiers are just going to look for the valid needle in the haystack while ignore all the other potential thorns.

Of course, we have a problem with mail integrity mishaps.

But it doesn't really make sense for verifiers to just accept or treat more special the valid signature and leave them in limbo with the same domains being exploited with fake signatures or just DKIM ignorant legacy bad guys spoofing with non-signed messages.

So in one respect, I really don't care what technology XYZ is, we need something to help protect against DKIM fallacies.

In the other respect, SSP is as good as it gets, in my opinion, as a open public protocol which interfaces quite well with the possible DKIM signer results.

DKIM risk falling into a "batteries not included" dilemma that many other early rudimentary technologies have suffered.

--
HLS



_______________________________________________
NOTE WELL: This list operates according to http://mipassoc.org/dkim/ietf-list-rules.html

<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>