ietf-dkim
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Re: [ietf-dkim] ISSUE 1519: SSP-02:Author Signature scope too narrow

2008-02-13 17:56:03
Douglas Otis wrote:

On Feb 13, 2008, at 3:46 PM, Jim Fenton wrote:

Douglas Otis wrote:
See:
https://rt.psg.com/Ticket/Display.html?id=1519

Also relates to issue 1399 "clarify i= vs. SSP" if I understand that correctly.

To briefly summarize, I understand Doug's issue to be the question of whether the local-part of an Author Address should be matched against the i= value, if a local-part is present in i=.

SSP matches the local part if present
draft-levine-asp-00 matches only the domain part
Doug is suggesting a third alternative: to match the Author Address against the g= field in the key record used to verify the signature.

Doug, please verify that I understand the issue correctly before I invest a lot of keystrokes in responding.

Jim,

Almost.  Here is the 10,000 foot view from the two perspectives.

View 1: (recommended)

The verifier does not police how someone might make use of a DKIM key.

Restrictions on the key (g= t= parameters) only limit which identities can be associated with a signature. Policy, on the other hand, is constrained only by DNS hierarchy. When a domain signs a message for a group of users within different sub-domains, the message would be considered compliant with an "all" assertion when a valid signature's d= parameter is at or above the From email-address domain (referencing the policy). The identity and header associated with a signature is not germane to DKIM policy.

This seems like the rarest of situations: Not only do you have multiple
From addresses in the message, which is rare to start with, but you're
considering a case where the multiple From addresses come from different subdomains and optimizing for that case so that only one signature will work for any of them. This seems like it's trying to redefine RFC 4871, where the default value of i= comes from the value of d=, and if a domain wants to sign for a subdomain it MUST include an i= tag with the name of the subdomain. If a signature was supposed to be valid for any subdomain, RFC 4871 should say that.

So: -1

View 2: (conservative)

The verifier should police how someone might make use of a DKIM restricted key.

Restrictions on the key (g= t= parameters) limit which identities can be associated with a signature. In essence, the sub-domain and identity within the From email-address must be encompassed within the scope of the key's restrictions. In the case of restricted keys, the key should be able to have provided a valid signature for the From email-address identity and domain (referencing the policy). The identity and sub-domain associated with a signature is not germane to DKIM policy. The signature might be on-behalf-of of some other identity within headers other than the From, or even in no header at all.

Ignoring the subdomain stuff (see above) I think this corresponds to what I said, although you're using the term "identity" where I'm using "local-part". But what you want to do is check the key restriction against an Author Address, not the i= value, right?

-Jim

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