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Re: [ietf-dkim] NXDOMAIN vs positive existence of hostname or MX records.

2008-04-30 14:16:34

On Apr 30, 2008, at 12:49 PM, Steve Atkins wrote:
You, of course, don't care because you know there's no hostname or  
MX record for mail.flooble.example.com, so no right-thinking  
recipient will consider it legitimate mail anyway.

Agreed.

The positive existence of SMTP related records is safer than reliance  
on the lack of NXDOMAIN returned by some DNS transaction.  NXDOMAIN  
overlooks situations where wildcard records are used for unrelated  
reasons, and where hostnames are obtained by methods outside of DNS.   
Assume next year the XPTR concept becomes popular for securing SIP.   
Due to the ADSP discovery algorithm's reliance on NXDOMAIN (and  
therefore the presence of hostname records in DNS) protection might be  
lost or critical exchanges might be prevented.

The positive existence of a record related to SMTP confirms a domain  
regardless of the use of wildcards or DNS.  ADSP should be declared as  
pertaining to SMTP.  A declaration that ADSP pertains to SMTP appears  
to be the only safe path forward.  While DKIM might be used by other  
protocols, ADSP should be viewed as protecting SMTP exchanges to  
establish a logical and safe framework.

-Doug
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