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Re: [spf-discuss] DKIM modifier

2005-09-12 21:15:43
Julian Mehnle wrote:

This leads to an interesting question:

There are two variants: (a) SPF and DKIM both are _required_ for a message to pass, or (b) SPF and DKIM each are _sufficient_ for a message to pass.

Would it be useful to allow the _domain_owner_ to specify which variant they prefer?


I've thought about it some more. I don't think (a) is an interesting combination. What would (a) mean...

The MTA you got the message from is on the list of authorized MTAs for the domain and that (or one preceding as long as the message isn't modified) had a private key that says the message is authorized from the domain. I think it's largely redundant.

With a Pass for either you've got an identity you can hang reputation on if you are trying to bootstrap from forgery prevention to spam filtering. You might even get two.

I think (b), defined properly is much more interesting and what is more likely to be worth pursuing. DKIM and SPF both have a hard spot to get around. DKIM fails on mailing lists that modify messages (almost all of them) and SPF fails on forwarders that don't do SRS (or some other solution even less likely to be seen in the wild today) - again almost all of them.

Finding a way to combine the results to cover the weaknesses of each if, I think, an interesting and worthy problem to solve. No one else is working on it publicly that I'm aware of.

Scott K

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