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Re: [ietf-dkim] DKIM expert group meeting for Dutch 'comply or explain' list

2011-06-21 14:51:12
On 6/17/11 1:05 PM, Rolf E. Sonneveld wrote:
Dear all,

after some off-list conversation with Dave he suggested I might want to
send this to the list. I apologize in advance if this message does not
apply to you. I also apologize if you get this message twice, when you
are subscribed to both ietf-dkim and the opendkim list.
[]
Regards,
/rolf

Hi Rolf,

The general goal of DKIM was to establish a domain relationship as a 
trust basis for acceptance.  DKIM was also to allow incremental 
deployment without requiring undefined additional filtering performed by 
mail transfer or mail user agents.  When essential format checks are 
skipped, this deficiency allows acceptance based upon DKIM's domain to 
be potentially deceptive where its results may play an evil role that 
cannot be repaired through the use of reputation.

Free email providers likely use DKIM to take advantage of their "too big 
to block" volumes.  For these domains, their reputation is understood to 
offer little assurance of their overall integrity.  By allowing a 
pre-pended From header field to not affect the validity of a DKIM 
signature according to the specification means the UNDERSTOOD source of 
a message can NEVER be trusted.

Those that phish by taking advantage of this flaw are unlikely to affect 
the acceptance of any exploited high volume domain.  DKIM could have 
avoided the offering of false assurances by not ignoring illegal header 
fields per RFC5322 and defining such messages as resulting in invalid 
signatures.  At this time, it would be prudent to NOT recommend use of 
DKIM due to this and a lack of required Fake A-label detection.


-Doug
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