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Re: X-trust-previous-hop:

2005-05-10 04:42:18
On Tue, 2005-05-10 at 13:12 +0200, Alex van den Bogaerdt wrote:
On Tue, May 10, 2005 at 07:09:13AM -0400, Mark Shewmaker wrote:

It would be convenient for MUA's if there were a header item that said:
"I fully and completely trust the previous MTA."

Then this happens:

spammer adds:  "I fully and completely trust $mydomain"
then forwards to next hop.

In other words, if I cannot trust the received line, why
would I trust "X-trust-whatever" ?

A hop can only proclaim trust in the previous hop.

There is no variable substitution such as "$mydomain".

So the spammer could only say he trusts the hop previous to his mta,
which doesn't create any vulnerability.

The situation you bring up would translate to something like:

  Return-Path <forged-id(_at_)example(_dot_)com> <-\
  X-Trust-Previous-Hop:           <------Added by last MTA
  Received: from border-mta [..]  <-----/
  Authentication-Results: [..] <=====\
  Received-SPF: [..]           <======Added by border MTA
  Received: from spammer [..]  <=====/
  X-Trust-Previous-Hop:             <----\  
  Authentication-Results: [..]      <-----Added by spammer
  Received-SPF: [..]                <----/
  Received: by spamming-machine [..] <--/
  [..]

An MUA looking at the above would trust the top 6 lines, but nothing
below that.

-- 
Mark Shewmaker
mark(_at_)primefactor(_dot_)com


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