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Re: [ietf-dkim] ADSP and From header authentication?

2008-10-23 05:42:44
On Thu, 23 Oct 2008 01:52:56 +0100, Douglas Otis 
<dotis(_at_)mail-abuse(_dot_)org>
wrote:

S/MIME and OpenPGP provide a means to authenticate an email-address.
At this time, due to the Author-Signature definition, DKIM-ADSP does
not.  DKIM without ADSP could offer an assurance that an email-address
was authenticated, since the signature is free to indicate what the
signing domain actually authenticates.  What the signing domain
authenticates often differs from that of an email-address contained
within the From or Sender header field.  The authentication-header
draft overstates to a dangerous degree what these mechanisms
accomplish by using the term authentication.  Fixing the ADSP Author-
Signature definition would help eliminate the assumption of
"authenticated" with respect to DKIM-ADSP.

Indeed so. However, it is perfectly possible to construct a DKIM signature
that does _not_ include the From header. It would violate a MUST in the
definition of DKIM, but you cannot stop signers from doing it or verifiers
  from accepting it if they are so constructed. I suspect that intermediate
signers are just going to do this, RFC or no RFC.



-- 
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
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