ietf-dkim
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Re: [ietf-dkim] Consensus point on ADSP

2009-04-03 02:15:28
At 11:02 30-03-2009, DKIM Chair wrote:
What we need to do by the end of the week is this:

1. Decide whether the gist of Jim's proposal is something we can 
accept, whether
or not it would be our first preference?  John, for example, has 
said that it's
not his preference, but he considers it "harmless", and, therefore, 
acceptable.

1.5. For those who think we really need ADSP to use i= or something 
like it, can
you *accept* taking i= out for now, in the interest of moving ahead with the
spec, possibly to add i= or something like it back in through an 
extension later
if experience shows us that you're right?

This issue was discussed within this WG in 2007.  There was also a 
discussion about whether "SSP" is appropriate.  ADSP was chosen as it 
is a signing practice advertised by the Author Domain.  The Author is 
what is in the From: header field.

Granularity is one of the features offered by DKIM to restrict what 
signing address can be used.  What constitutes a signing address is 
left to local policy.  If we are using ADSP, we can, for example, 
match against the From: header field.

People can put anything in the i= tag.  We have seen that being done 
in practice.  The effect is that it may not match the email address 
in the From: header field.  One of the interesting features of the i= 
tag is that it can be used for subdomains.  This means that I can 
have one public key under example.com and reuse it for my 
subdomains.  Some people may argue that I could use a CNAME RR to 
point the subdomains to the public key.  That requires changes to 
DNS.  Most of us may find that trivial but it is complicated for DKIM 
users as DNS may be handled by a different entity.

My preference is not to take out the i= tag.  I think that the i= tag 
value should be used for the ADSP match.  If two parties want to use 
the i= tag for their local purposes, they can use an extension 
tag.  I only have to know what the value represents if there is a 
specification for it.

I prefer to see the note at the end of Section 2 of 
draft-ietf-dkim-ssp-09 removed.  Most users will not do multiple 
signatures because they see it as complex and because of the 
overhead.  If people want to use ADSP, keep it simple by telling them 
what signature constitutes a valid Author Signature.  When you say 
that "ADSP incompatible with valid DKIM usage ...", people will 
register the word "incompatibility" and view valid DKIM usage as 
mostly about third party signatures.

I find it difficult to comment on this point alone as the issues are 
intertwined.  The arguments by both sides open up questions about the concepts.

Regards,
-sm 

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