On Fri, May 31, 2019, at 6:59 AM, Douglas E. Foster wrote:
> I cannot speak to IETF consensus, since I am new to that process and I seem 
> to be an outlier already.
> 
> Agency and signatures are well understood legal concepts. 3000 years ago, 
> people sealed their letters with a signet ring stamped in warm clay. Signing 
> technologies have changed in that time, but the principle has not.

It would probably behoove you not to lecture experts in Internet messaging 
about 3000 years of history on a public mailing list. I'm just saying.


Thanks,
Stan

> 
> A courier is responsible for keeping the signed and sealed part of a message 
> unaltered. Envelope marks are acceptable.
> 
> A digital signature is supposed to provide non-repudiation. If I submit a 
> signed message to a list processor, and the list processor voids the 
> signature, it has given me verifiable repudiation, the opposite of what 
> either sender or receiver want. 
> 
> A closed group on a single server can use whatever rules they choose to 
> implement in that community. For example, a web forum operates on the rules 
> of the forum operator. However, an open group using the email infrastructure 
> has to work within the infrastructure it uses. In the email infrastructure, 
> the recipient has to deal with fraud, and any recipient accommodation to 
> "harmless" fraud facilitates the people who are doing "harmful" fraud to that 
> recipient.
> 
> There are some obvious use-cases for MTA changes to a message, and we would 
> do well to document and address them.
> 
> The first that comes to mind is MTA comment fields.
> - A list processor wants to add a comment indicating something about the list 
> that sent it.
> - A spam filter wants to add a tag indicating that the message is suspicious, 
> but not sufficiently suspicious to be blocked.
> 
> IETF would do well to specify a mechanism for MTAs to add information which 
> MUAs present to the user, while identifiying that that the information came 
> from the MTA rather than the original sender.
> 
> Another use-case is related to body sections. IETF only forwards plain text, 
> while most email solutions send messages in HTML+Text. I assume that IETF 
> also drops attachments. DKIM cannot handle this because it hashes the entire 
> body. A signature system that signed each section individually would allow 
> sections to be dropped, with notification to the user, without breaking the 
> signatures on the other MIME types.
> 
> DKIM was supposed to provide sender authentication when SPF was invalidated 
> by forwarding, so DMARC said that the two techniques should be evaluated 
> together. I am realizing that if SPF is invalidated, DKIM is probably 
> invalidated as well, so we have no usable sender authentication technology. 
> This may explain why so many products that I have examined lack support for 
> DMARC or lack good exception mechanisms for SPF, DKIM, and DMARC.
> 
> It seems that email needs something like "DNS Flag Day", where major players 
> announce a date after which certain behaviors that will no longer be 
> tolerated. But as others have said, IETF is not that organization, and the 
> organization may not exist.
> 
> More discouraged than ever,
> 
> Doug Foster
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> *From*: "Dave Crocker" <[email protected]>
> *Sent*: Friday, May 31, 2019 12:41 AM
> *To*: [email protected]
> *Cc*: "IETF DMARC WG" <[email protected]>
> *Subject*: Re: [dmarc-ietf] Debugging and preventing DKIM failures- 
> suggestion 
> 
> On 5/30/2019 7:49 PM, Douglas E. Foster wrote:
>  > I rather hoped that IETF would be the poster-boy for list processing
>  > done correctly.
> 
>  "Correctly"?
> 
>  A message to a list is 'delivered' to the list. As in, it goes to the
>  specified addresse... the list. A message from a list has been
>  re-posted by the list.
> 
>  There are no constraints on the changes that are permitted to a message,
>  before it is re-posted. There are no specifications that limit or
>  direct the behaviors of a list processor.
> 
>  Different groups want and probably need different behaviors by a list
>  processor. Periodic efforts to create such constraints have failed.
> 
>  So while it would certainly make things easier to have list processors
>  behave in a simple, consistent manner, there's ample evidence that ain't
>  gonna happen.
> 
>  If you can link the 'correctly' you are suggesting, to some documented,
>  community consensus, please cite it.
> 
> 
>  d/
> 
>  --
>  Dave Crocker
>  Brandenburg InternetWorking
>  bbiw.net
> 
> _______________________________________________
> dmarc mailing list
> [email protected]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/dmarc
> 
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