Murray S. Kucherawy wrote:
> While considering the idea of multiple signatures on a message, I
> realized that it may be desirable or even necessary to be able to
> indicate to the MUA or some other agent which signatures succeeded
> verification and which did not.  However it's also conceivable that
> two signatures on the message could come from the same domain and even
> use the same selector. Moreover, it's possible that headers (and
> therefore signatures) can be reordered in transit.  Thus, some other
> way of uniquely identifying which result applies to which signature,
> regardless of the method used to relay these results, becomes necessary.
>
> I'd like to suggest another signature tag, perhaps "I=" (for
> "identifier") or "f=" (for "fingerprint"), be defined.  Its purpose is
> to identify uniquely the signature header from all others that may be
> present.  The tag is required.  Its value is generated by taking the
> first four bytes of the message's hash and expressing them in the
> usual hexadecimal way, with no restrictions on case.  Like "b=", the
> tag is present when the signature header is appended to the hashed
> data for the purposes of completing canonicalization, but the value of
> this tag is the null string in that instance.
>
> Unfortunately this means the identifier/fingerprint/whatever is
> unprotected text in the signature, so a bad-guy can add two signatures
> (perhaps in conjunction with a collision attack) with the same
> signature identifier.  I can't think of a nice way to protect it
> though without doing something like hashing twice, once with a blank
> identifier (to get the identifier) and then once with the identifier
> inserted (to get the final hash to sign).
I don't understand the value of knowing which signature(s) succeeded
beyond knowing what the signing identity/ies (i= or equivalent) is
associated with the successful signature(s).  One of the primary reasons
for i= is to clarify the role of the signer when the domain isn't
enough, i.e., when [EMAIL PROTECTED] sends a message through
[EMAIL PROTECTED], you want to know whether it's a signature on behalf of
the user or the list.

-Jim
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