ietf-dkim
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[ietf-dkim] DKIM Key Size Reporting Methods

2015-05-13 14:22:17
There are several ways to offer the DKIM key size expectation for 
Receiver local policies to deal with:

1) Report the bit size in Authentication-Results (Auth-Res) header.

    Authentication-Results: mail.example.com
        dkim=pass ..... bitsize=num-bits;

2) Add a DMARC tag extension "ess=" Expected Signature Strength with 
values

     ess=std76,    default, tell receivers to follow DKIM STD76.(RFC6376)
     ess=num-bits, num-bits key size is or higher is acceptable

3) Or use "ess=" as a DKIM tag extension:

   DKIM-Signature: d=signer.domain; ess=1024; ......

Any method allows for local policy filtering engines to deal with it.

-- 
HLS

On 5/13/2015 2:13 PM, Dave Crocker wrote:
On 5/12/2015 10:25 PM, Roland Turner wrote:
On 05/13/2015 12:27 PM, Murray S. Kucherawy wrote:

https://sourceforge.net/p/opendkim/bugs/221/) appears to agree with
what I'm saying above.  When talking about unacceptably small keys,
the "unacceptable" decision is not made by the protocol, but by the
receiver.

+1


(I haven't been tracking this thread in detail, so please forgive my
missing some nuance.)


I think the issue separates between 'interoperability' vs. 'usage
policy'.  The former is the protocol.  The latter is either
Internet-wide BCP or local policy, depending upon strong community
consensus.

I did a quick search for (rfc ietf minimum key size cryptograph) and
found a series of RFCs that do indeed talk about minimum key size.  All
of them are Informational, rather than standards track or BCP.

As a non-crypto-geek, the solid constant I've observed is that crypto
algorithm and key size choices are highly malleable:  they change over
time.  So a protocol needs some agility with respect to these and MUST
NOT be locked in too tightly.

DKIM is algorithm-agile.  It needs to also be key-length-agile.

If there is strong community consensus on the choices of algorithm and
key-length, it needs to be asserted as an operational convention, not in
the base protocol

d/




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