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Re: [ietf-dkim] Features that could be reconsidered as part of the bis process

2009-05-20 17:33:08


Steve Atkins wrote:
On May 20, 2009, at 12:10 PM, Douglas Otis wrote:

Since email must deal with large amounts of spam and abuse, it would
be good to have provisions in DKIM that allow secured attachments to
be excluded from the DKIM hash algorithm without causing the entire
message to be considered unsigned

Why would you want to sign email as something you vouched for,
while still enabling anyone to replace the content of the email
with something else without invalidating that signature?


As I recall, the primary argument in favor of l= was survival after being 
relayed through a Mediator like a mailing list, many of which add a footer to a 
message.  (Proof of concept:  This message is an example.)

A different way of looking at this goal is that it is an attempt to sign parts 
of a message body, rather than all of it, much as one might do with s/mime or 
openpgp.

Hence, l= participates in the general desire to have a DKIM signature survive 
the transfer path.  Note that having a signature cover only some of the header 
fields is another example of this.

I think the counter-argument to this goal, with respect to the body, is that 
header fields other than primary addressing fields and the Subject field are 
not 
particularly high-leverage targets for deception, the way the body is.

d/


-- 

   Dave Crocker
   Brandenburg InternetWorking
   bbiw.net
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