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Re: [ietf-dkim] (registered) domain name (Re: errata revision: opaque)

2009-03-26 22:23:35

On Mar 26, 2009, at 7:05 PM, Dave CROCKER wrote:

well, now I'm completely confused.  to my eyes, your example fits  
exactly what 'registered' and 'resolvable' mean, but I guess you  
have something else in mind.


hatstand.beartrap.blighty.com doesn't resolve. A query for it returns  
NXDOMAIN, and it doesn't exist in DNS in any way:

      steve$ dig  hatstand.beartrap.blighty.com txt
      ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NXDOMAIN, id: 12223

Yet it's potentially a valid SDID, because  
banjo.aardvark._domainkey.hatstand.beartrap.blighty.com *does* return  
a TXT record.

      steve$ dig +short  
banjo.aardvark._domainkey.hatstand.beartrap.blighty.com txt
      "I am a public key - no, really!"

Not only does hatstand.beartrap.blighty.com not resolve, it's not  
registered anywhere. It exists solely as a substring of the string  
that's actually queried -  
banjo.aardvark._domainkey.hatstand.beartrap.blighty.com

The only thing that can be said about the SDID in DNS terms is that  
the signer of the mail has the ability to add TXT records in the  
subtree rooted at that domain.

Given that, trying to make more specific statements about what the  
SDID is than something vague like "a domain name" is likely to lead to  
something that's misleading or plain wrong.

-1 on "registered" or "resolvable".

Cheers,
   Steve


RFC 1034 and RFC 1035 make many references to resolvers.

d/

Steve Atkins wrote:
On Mar 26, 2009, at 6:36 PM, Dave CROCKER wrote:

Steve Atkins wrote:
On Mar 26, 2009, at 6:26 PM, Barry Leiba wrote:
We could say "DNS-resolvable".
We could, but it's not actually a requirement that the SDID  
resolve  in  the DNS (and in many cases it won't).

Really?

Then how does the receiver obtain the public key for performing   
verification?

key retrieval is defined as using d=.
If you receive an email with a selector of banjo.aardvark and an  
SDID  of hatstand.beartrap.blighty.com then you'll hopefully be  
able to  resolve  
banjo.aardvark._domainkey.hatstand.beartrap.blighty.com, but   
that's all you can say about ability to resolve any query in the   
domain tree under the SDID, including the SDID itself.
At least, that's how I understand it.
Cheers,
  Steve
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-- 

 Dave Crocker
 Brandenburg InternetWorking
 bbiw.net

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