On 04/06/2011 09:29 AM, Steve Atkins wrote:
On Apr 6, 2011, at 9:07 AM, Michael Thomas wrote:
There is something to be said about using tags in the signature
rather than signed headers. Signers don't have to have any
reason -- and none should be inferred -- for signing any given
header. There are no semantics associated with that. Putting
something in the signature on the other hand carries
the exact semantics of what the value means _in the context of
the DKIM signature_.
So unless we want to start making new headers have a presence
of a DKIM semantics requirement -- which would probably be
hopeless -- it's probably better to keep extensibility within
the narrow confines of the DKIM header itself.
Not all new headers. (And the DKIM header doesn't really have
any proper extensibility, and the use of single or two letter names
for fields makes ad-hoc addition of new fields to that header - without
a registry or version bump - quite a bit riskier than the "Full-English-Word:"
approach 5322 headers use.)
Rather, if anyone wants to release a specification that "requires"
some sort of data be associated with a dkim signature then they
can equally well release a spec that defines a new 5322 header
that holds the same data.
As a concrete example, if I wanted to include the authenticated
age of each email sender (something the gambling industry might
be interested in) then I can do that within the DKIM signature:
DKIM-Signature: v=1; d=corp.example.com;<blah>; db=19700224
Or I can specify that that should be done with a dedicated 5322
header that both references and is signed by a DKIM signature.
DKIM-Signature: v=1; d=corp.example.com;<blah>;
h=To:Authenticated-Birthdate:<blah>
Authenticated-Birthdate: version=0.1; dkim=corp.example.com;
birthdate=1970-02-24
As long as the Authenticated-Birthdate header is included in the
DKIM signature it references, that's pretty much equivalent as
far as senders and receivers who are both using the same
authenticated birthdate spec are concerned, just more flexible
and less likely to clash with or break other DKIM usage.
As I said, that would be a completely new requirement for
headers -- something that we don't do today. Also: you could
get into awkward situations where you'd be required to not
sign something that was present in the message if you couldn't
vouch for its correctness, even if you wanted to vouch for its
transport integrity. If it's in the signature header itself, there's
no such ambiguity.
Mike
_______________________________________________
NOTE WELL: This list operates according to
http://mipassoc.org/dkim/ietf-list-rules.html