> Instead, I see language that drives people to fixate on the 1% of traffic 
> that has a DMARC policy with p=reject. 

> Indeed: I caution everyone about making assumptions based on what we 
think we know, and extending those assumptions to the entire Internet. 
There are things we can study (by, for example, doing DNS queries and 
analyzing results), and there are things about which we just say, "I 
don't know anyone who does [or doesn't do] this, so that must be the 
case overall." The latter is hazardous. 

According to September 2020 scans ( [ 
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9375477/ | 
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9375477/ ] ) 

41% of them have p=reject, 9.3% have p=quarantine, and 39.6% have p=none. 

However, my September 2022 measurements (not published) shows that only 38.3% 
have p != none. 
Even though, September 2020 scans resulted in only 310,185 organizational 
domain names with DMARC and my measurements 11M8. 

> Then we are disappointed if they don't look for exceptions, including mailing 
> list messages, 

One of our latest discussions was about domain owners having p=none who might 
enhance their infrastructure. 
>From my measurements, ~40% of domain owners have p=none but nor rua/ruf. 
I extrapolate that 40% of domain owners do not plan to have more restrictive 
handling policies. 

Thus what are the expectations of newcomers in DMARC? 
In my opinion, the current state of DMARC does not meet the expectations. 
I think that the task force should take a closer look at this problem and work 
towards a more user-friendly reporting system, and different, more customizable 
handling policies. 

Best 


De: "Douglas Foster" <dougfoster.emailstanda...@gmail.com> 
À: "IETF DMARC WG" <dmarc@ietf.org> 
Envoyé: Vendredi 21 Juillet 2023 01:40:49 
Objet: Re: [dmarc-ietf] Eliminating From Munging from this list 

It is not at all clear that my goals for this effort match with others, so I 
will state mine: 
My goal is to develop documents that help evaluators make better disposition 
decisions, to save civilization from as much malicious content as possible. An 
inference from my piece of reality is that this effort has a large upside 
potential. 

Sender authentication is the core of this effort because it is something that 
we can actually specify. Defining a standard for defenses against malicious 
content seems infeasible. For all its difficulties, sender authentication is 
relatively feasible. 

Verification of RFC5322.From is the linchpin to Sender Authentication because 
the RFC5322.From address links the user-visible content to the invisible 
document metadata and SMTP protocol parameters. DMARC defines a formula for 
declaring the RFC5322.From address verified, thereby separating a general 
mailstream into two sub-streams: the verified portion and the unverified 
portion. 

This group has taken the position that a message is only verified if the domain 
owner has published a DMARC policy and the message produces DMARC PASS. From my 
data, that works out to about 40% of the traffic, most of which is Gmail. My 
results seem roughly consistent with data from other sources. This means that 
60% of the traffic has no defined method for detecting possible impersonation, 
so network safety depends entirely on the strength of your content filtering. 

However, it is easy to note that the DMARC concept of Aligned SPF PASS or 
Aligned DKIM PASS is applicable to any message, with or without a DMARC policy. 
There is a minor complication about choosing between relaxed and strict 
authentication, which is solvable by local policy. Applying the DMARC formula 
to a general mailstream, the DMARC-equivalent PASS percentage suddenly jumps 
into the vicinity of 85%. 

The remaining 15% of mail has uncertain impersonation risk, but is much more 
manageable than 60%. It has been a fertile field for investigation. When I ask, 
"Why is this message not impersonated?", the investigation produces one of 
three answers: 


    * The message stream is acceptable, but needs a local policy to allow 
future messages to appear authenticated. 
    * The message stream is unwanted even though it is not an impersonation, so 
this and future messages from this sender should be blocked. 
    * The message stream is from a malicious impersonator, so this and future 
messages from this sender should be blocked. 
Whichever conclusion is reached, investigation is a one-time effort per message 
source. So a technical path exists for ensuring 100% authentication of all 
allowed messages, and quarantining the uncertain messages for investigation. In 
my experience, the middle result dominates. As my recurring and wanted traffic 
gets an authentication rule, and unwanted traffic gets blocked, the volume of 
investigations goes down while the percentage of block results goes up. 

When I examine the language of RFC 7489 and our proposed documents, I find no 
path toward 100% authentication. Instead, I see language that drives people to 
fixate on the 1% of traffic that has a DMARC policy with p=reject. Then we are 
disappointed if they don't look for exceptions, including mailing list 
messages, within the Failure subset of the 1% subset. 

If we don't change strategy, nothing will change. Desperate evaluators will 
continue to read our document as a ticket to unconditionally block that tiny 
portion of their mailstream which produces Fail with p=reject, and more 
importantly, will continue to be vulnerable to impersonation attacks buried in 
the other 99%. 

Doug Foster 






On Thu, Jul 20, 2023 at 3:53 PM Jan Dušátko <jan= [ 
mailto:40dusatko....@dmarc.ietf.org | 40dusatko....@dmarc.ietf.org ] > wrote: 


Dne 20. 7. 2023 v 14:46 Barry Leiba napsal(a): 
>> I think that it shouldn't affect the answer about what to put in the 
>> document. Those of us here are a 
>> miniscule slice of the overall user base for email, I think it's a serious 
>> mistake to think peculiarities of 
>> the exact lists we use is relevant to anything. 
> Indeed: I caution everyone about making assumptions based on what we 
> think we know, and extending those assumptions to the entire Internet. 
> There are things we can study (by, for example, doing DNS queries and 
> analyzing results), and there are things about which we just say, "I 
> don't know anyone who does [or doesn't do] this, so that must be the 
> case overall." The latter is hazardous. 
> 
> Barry 
> 
> 
I couldn't agree more. Thinking and knowing are two different things. 
Assuming what others want on the Internet is another thing. 
For that reason, I would also like to ask. What are that technologies 
supposed to be for? The ability to define a domain owner's policy? 
Covering tools to provide protection against counterfeiting? Or a 
meta-tool for authenticity? 
In my opinion, this is an effort to secure what email technology lacks. 
The ability to protect against communication counterfeiting and, under 
tight conditions, to verify the authenticity of the source. The problem 
is the wide mutual possibilities of communication, which have been 
designed with accessibility and flexibility in mind. 
I apologize for such a broad response. I'm trying to understand what 
your goals are to avoid misunderstanding. Sometimes I'm lost in translation. 

Regards 

Jan 

_______________________________________________ 
dmarc mailing list 
[ mailto:dmarc@ietf.org | dmarc@ietf.org ] 
[ https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/dmarc | 
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/dmarc ] 



_______________________________________________ 
dmarc mailing list 
dmarc@ietf.org 
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/dmarc 

_______________________________________________
dmarc mailing list
dmarc@ietf.org
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/dmarc

Reply via email to