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[ietf-dkim] Two issues derived from Ticket #20: signature practices

2011-04-27 13:43:07
On 27/Apr/11 01:42, John R. Levine wrote:
I agree with Dave's changes,

+1, and also for Murray's advice of signing A-R fields.  However, in
such case, the last phrase in Sec 7.2 (INFORMATIVE ADVICE to MUA
filter writers) should be changed from

   To circumvent this attack, verifiers may wish to delete existing
   results header fields after verification and before adding a new
   header field.

to, e.g.,

   To circumvent this attack, verifiers may wish to delete counterfeit
   results header fields after verification and before adding a new
   header field.

except that you need to sign Content-Type: if you use l=.

However, signing Content-Type affects a signature's robustness, due to
the possibility to add/remove quotes from MIME attributes during those
rewrites that l= is meant to pass through.

Otherwise it's trivial to replace the entire visible contents of
the message by changing the MIME section separator, and adding new
stuff at the end.

"Content-Type" is not currently mentioned in Section 9.1.1. "Addition
of new MIME parts to multipart/*".  It should.  Because it is now the
27th, I dare propose a replacement for that section:

   If the body length limit does not cover a closing MIME multipart
   section (including the trailing ""--CRLF"" portion), then it is
   possible to add a new body part without breaking the signature.
   This possibility can be abused.  Depending on the details of the
   MIME type and the implementation of the verifying MTA and the
   receiving MUA, this could allow an attacker to change the
   information displayed to an end user from an apparently trusted
   source.

   For example, if a message has a "multipart/alternative" body part,
   an attacker might be able to add a new body part that is preferred
   by the displaying MUA.  Appending content to an existing body part
   can also have surprising effects, as exemplified in the next
   section 9.1.2.

   Furthermore, if the top Content-Type does not appear (possibly
   twice) in the h= tag, then it is possible to replace the entire
   visible contents of the message by defining a suitable MIME
   multipart/* and its boundary, so that the signed content appears to
   only cover a MIME preamble and/or invisible MIME entities.

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