ned(_dot_)freed(_at_)mrochek(_dot_)com writes:
> > ned(_dot_)freed(_at_)mrochek(_dot_)com writes:
> > > Instead, we're engaged in the
> > > time-honored IETF practice of letting the unattainable best be the
mortal enemy
> > > of the good enough.
>
> > Please explain. What is "good enough"?
>
> There are numerous examples. To pick one of the more recent: The
unattainable
> goal was to define a whole-message signature scheme that can be used end to
> end, where the middle includes things like mailing list processors. Good
enough
> is to instead specify a scheme that works for "long hops" but is not
intended
> (and in fact explicitly excludes) end to end use.
I've asked this before, and I'll ask it again: what
problem does that solve? "Good enough" that doesn't
solve real world problems is not "good" or "enough".
It provides a sufficient basis to deploy a domain-level message authentication
system.
Of course this is not, in and of itself, capable of addressing the spam
problem, since spammers will simply register random domains with whatever
credentials they need. But this issue of what the identity the message is bound
to actually means arises in all signature schemes. What this scheme has that
the end to end proposals do not is the ability to be deployed on top of
existing infrastructure.
It is also worth noting that the lack of effectiveness of this, or any other,
signature scheme is also going to cause deployment problems in and of itself.
This in turn means that we need to start considering how to attach meaning to
domain identities sooner rather than later, e.g. by devising some form of
accreditation mechanism. Believing that signature schemes will widely deploy
when the signatures they produce have no meaning is a fantasy, plain and
simple. So, while the signature and accreditation problems are in some
sense separate, they both have to be solved before we'll have something
useful. And this is also something that's missing from the current
charter.
Ned