On August 13, 2005 at 11:18, Keith Moore wrote: > no, it doesn't follow. in particular, it presumes that the present "bad > actors" and the future "bad actors" are similar, or that they're engaged > in similar activity. it's entirely likely that authentication will > change the behavior of bad actors, but that doesn't mean that bad actors > won't benefit by signing mail.
Agreed. But we should not let it prevent us from addressing problems when possible. Bad actors will always find ways to exploit systems, so the realistic goal is to increase the costs to execute exploits, minimizing the attack vectors available, and minimize the damage when exploits occur. I definitely agree that much of the threat analysis that has been provided is oriented around the DKIM solution; i.e. tailor the problem to fit the solution. To me, DKIM appears to only address the forgery problem. Dealing with forgery will not eliminate undesirable mail (which btw, is a subjective term), but can address the damage forgery can do to identities being forged. There are two general types of identities that can be forged (wrt email): addresses and domains (have I left anything out?). Therefore, when discussing solutions to forgery, any solution must consider forgery wrt these different types of identities. It may not be essential that any proposed solution address all types of forgery, but the solution must not facilitate other forms of forgery. For example, if a proposed solution addresses domain-based forgery, the solution must not facilitate address-level forgery: bad actors should not be able to exploit the "trust" of domain forgery protection to perpetrate address-level forgery. --ewh _______________________________________________ ietf-dkim mailing list [email protected] http://mipassoc.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf-dkim
