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[ietf-dkim] Resigner Support of RFC 5617 (ADSP)

2009-10-09 22:02:19
J.D. Falk wrote:


Whoever wants to take on this project should feel free to 

borrow from the article I wrote in June:


http://www.circleid.com/posts/dkim_for_discussion_lists/



J.D, the issue with your suggestions is that once again, there is 
ignorance of RFC 5617 ADSP policies by list receivers and especially 
resigners.  At least I don't see any implication for RFC 5617 support 
in your outline.

IMTO, before any automated concept can work well, the supportive DKIM 
network must expect protocol consistency to be established among all 
DKIM nodes.  The receiver MTA or node that will receive and provide 
DKIM verification processing SHOULD honor RFC 5617 if they are going 
to resigned, then it MUST support RFC 5617.

Consider this real situation that happen a few weeks ago.  It opened 
my eyes in how RFC 5617 MUST be interpreted and has altered how it 
must be implemented for our mail API system.

This occurred with the DKIM-DEV list I am subscribed to. I forget the 
exact reasons but the end result is that my MDA began to reject my 
copy of the DKIM-DEV list distributed mail  I thought the sender was 
white listed as I receiving mail fine in the past.

But something changed on either end and I received an automated final 
warning notification that my subscription would be moved if I don't 
response to the notification (click the url and confirm I am a real 
person).  It was odd the notification got thru but normal distribution 
were rejected. So I fixed that by adding more white listing rules for 
this list sender.

That got me thinking about RFC 5617 support as it was being 
implementing as part of our SMTP level scripting filter language.

Out of the box, our inbound MTA will run the "DKIM SCRIPT"  at the 
SMTP level.

So imagine, if a resigned mail was received from mipassoc.org for a 
author domain that happens to have a ADSP = "DISCARD" or "ALL", then 
this would be a failed DKIM/ADSP transaction.

It was already troubling that a list server would not honor RFC 5617, 
but now I saw how the list server can now begin to send notifications 
to subscribers for rejected mail.

If the inbound MTA issues a 55x rejection, then what will happen is 
the MLS will begin to send notifications threatening to auto-remove 
subscribers who's MDA are rejecting the resigned mail.

So I see three possible mitigating options:

1) Update RFC 5617

  1.a) All DKIM-BASE compliant receivers SHOULD supprt RFC 5617

  1.b) All DKIM Resigners MUST respect RFC 5617

  1.c) All receivers who support RFC 5617 MUST use post
       message acception silent discarding of mail and not use a
       SMTP level rejection to avoid bounce issues and mail list
       subscription removals.

2) Extend RFC 5617 with an explicit 3rd party signing option.

3) Deprecate RFC 5617

    If list server developers or operators are not expected to
    support or honor RFC 5617, then we SHOULD declare RFC 5617 has
    as non interoperable with DKIM-BASE, deprecate it and remove
    it from standard track.

Ideally, I think #1 is required if we are going to keep it. I think 
should also be considered as well.

But I don't think we can stick with RFC 5617 if resigners are not 
going to support it when random receivers might support simply because 
its there!

So #3 is an option I am hoping the opponents of policy will finally 
see a legitimate reason to get rid of ADSP.   I saw that because I 
would rather to get rid of ADSP if its not going to be properly 
recognized honored by resigners.


--
Hector Santos, CTO
Santronics Software, Inc.
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