ietf-mailsig
[Top] [All Lists]

Re: Good as the enemy of OK

2005-01-11 18:00:40

"Tony" == Tony Finch <dot(_at_)dotat(_dot_)at> writes:

    Tony> On Tue, 11 Jan 2005, Douglas Otis wrote:
    >> On Tue, 2005-01-11 at 11:53, Sam Hartman wrote:
    >> 
    >> > I'd like to go farther: why are we signing the body?  We're
    >> trying to > prevent spam not modification of existing mail
    >> messages.  I think that > canonicalizing headers may be
    >> challenging enough; do we really need to > solve the problem of
    >> canonicalizing bodies on top of this.
    >> 
    >> Capture of a signed header would allow attaching a message as a
    >> vehicle to carry spam.

    Tony> For example, you can do this with on-line mailing list
    Tony> archives. The replay attack problem is very serious. The
    Tony> BATV and SES groups have discussed it in some detail and
    Tony> have generally agreed that the only sure way to protect
    Tony> against it is with full message data signatures.

I understand you can get headers to replay.  It seems that defining a
largish replay window (say 30 days) and keeping enough information to
uniquely identify a message from this replay window is an option worth
considering.

Yes, it has space requirements for the receiver.  So does storing
messages on a POP or IMAP server or for the backing store for a
webmail application.  Ultimately for many receivers, mail does get
stored for a while.


--Sam


<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>