Dave CROCKER wrote:
I have two
submission domains that I use. One, gmail.com, which does DKIM
signing, will only allow me to use a "From" address after it has sent
a test message to that address and seen that I can access the test
message. So it's made *some* level of confirmation that I owned the
address at the time I set it up.
Well, this is a reasonably common type of example. I think it confuses the
difference between a signer's policies, versus DKIM semantics. It is
certainly
true that different signers have wildly different meanings behind their
signing
behavior. However there is nothing in DKIM that communicates a signer's
policies. (Obviously, ADSP is an example of a value-added semantic, but as
we
all have been reminding ourselves, that's an additional function.)
The critical point, here, is the question: What can the verifier know? They
cannot know about differential policies and in particular the choice of what
parts of the message are covered by the signature communicates no additional
semantics.
I think that is a different question but one that is based on a
fundamental premise of having statements of validity for
cryptographically protected parts of the message.
Does all this suggest that one must begin with a presumption of false
information?
In other words before you can ask the question "How/what can the
verifier know?" it has to begin with the validity claims made by the
signature and its bound parts.
So when you sign a message with signer-domain and it has a required
bind for a author domain, these are two minimal statements of validity
to be verified and perhaps confirmed by some "higher power." Perhaps
Policy with its author-domain feed, and/or perhaps out of scope
reputation engines with its signer-domain feed.
I think it is the latter that you are pushing for. I would like to
keep DKIM pure and open to not just be about the signer domain. I
believe that as long we continue to minimize the statement of validity
a valid DKIM signature provides for 5322.From, the more these "usual
misunderstandings" will persist. There is a reason why it doesn't go
away and might we are trying to promote an obscure and abstract
concept of an independent signer domain that today it is still very
hard to grasp, especially with the lack of application demonstration.
On the other hand, the majority of the industry can grasp and feel
the issues regarding a 5322.From and can better understand the idea
that DKIM might be a technology to help protect it.
--
Hector Santos, CTO
http://www.santronics.com
http://santronics.blogspot.com
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