Taking in information from unauthenticated sources and acting on it is an operational problem per se. Have we learned nothing in the last 30 years?

Mike

On 1/25/21 9:19 AM, Seth Blank wrote:
What operational problem are we solving here? Absent evidence of a problem and strong consensus on the solution, let's close these tickets and move on.

On Mon, Jan 25, 2021 at 9:10 AM Douglas Foster <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:

    Since the status quo is unauthenticated, I wonder if adding a
    signing requirement will help.
    Will recipients discad unsigned messages, or accept whatever is
    available to maximize their information capture?  I suspect they
    will conrinye to accept everything.

    I think we would need an identified threat before recipients would
    be motivated to discard.

    But what about John's problems with receiving reports that should
    not have gone to him?   I did not understand the root cause, but I
    would hope there is something that can be done.  Would signing
    help receiving sites, those with less sophistication than he has,
    be able to sort out noise more effectively?


    On Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 11:51 AM Michael Thomas <[email protected]
    <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:


        On 1/25/21 8:44 AM, Todd Herr wrote:
        On Mon, Jan 25, 2021 at 10:18 AM Michael Thomas
        <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:


            The main thing I've learned over the years of dealing
            with security is to not underestimate what a motivated
            attacker can do. Your imagination is not the same as
            their imagination. Closing #98 in particular is
            absolutely ridiculous: the report should already have a
            DKIM signature or SPF so it's just a matter of making
            sure its valid. Why would you *not* want to insure that?
            The amount of justification for *not* having the receiver
            authenticate it is a mountain. The amount of effort to
            authenticate it is trivial for mail. Levine's dismissal
            of security concerns because he has anecdotal "evidence"
            from a backwater domain carries no weight at all.


        That's all well and good, but you haven't answered the
        question I asked.

        What threats do you have in mind? Put another way, how do you
        envision an attacker exploiting the lack of authentication in
        a DMARC report to his or her gain?

        No, sorry, the onus is on the people who don't think it can be
        gamed. A bald assertion that it can't be gamed is very
        unconvincing. You need to lay out a miles long case for why it
        cannot be gamed. And to what end? #98 has a simple piece of
        text that should be added to DMARC to eliminate the
        possibility of forgery. You'd need a 10 page threat I-D to
        explain why it's not necessary. What is the point of that? For
        email, it's trivial to prevent forgeries. Why would anybody
        argue against that?

        Mike

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