On Sat, 28 Mar 2009 01:09:29 -0000, Jim Fenton <[email protected]> wrote:


> 2. It has been noted that a domain might have different reasons for
> signing a message.  It might, for example, sign a message on behalf of a
> mailing list manager operating in that domain.  When Author Signature is
> based on a d= comparison alone, any signature from the same domain as
> the author is assumed to be a signature representing the original
> introduction of the message into the mail stream.  That may or may not
> be an important distinction, but I'm pointing out that information is
> lost and I'm not sure we have enough experience to say that we don't
> need it.

I don't think that is quite right. Suppose foo.example has declared that  
it signs everything, with strength "Discardable". Then four possibilities  
arise:

From: [email protected]            From:[email protected]
Valid signature from foo.example     Absent/broken signature from  
foo.example
       ACCEPT                               DISCARD

 From [email protected]             From [email protected]
Valid signature from foo.example     Absent/broken signature from  
foo.example
       ???????                              ????????

The first two cases are obvious. The second two are Jim's example. What to  
do?

I think he misunderstands the meaning of "Discardable". It does not mean  
"Everything we sign if From: us". It means "Everthing From: us is signed  
by us".

So, in the second two cases, the semantics already prescribed by ADSP is:

Assuming there is no second signature by bar.example, LOOK UP the ADSP  
record for _bar.example_, and if that says "Discardable" then DISCARD it.

IOW, if some user at a Discardable domain sends email to a list, it had  
better be signed before it reaches the list, and the list expander had  
better not break that signature.

But if the Discardable domain operates a list expander for a list that  
anyone may post to, then it will naturally sign the expanded messages (and  
it would be polite to add [email protected]), but there is no  
implication that anything should or should not be Discarded (though  
perhaps Assessors might possibly do so if Sender: was not by that domain -  
list expanders being supposed to set Sender).

> In the words of Dave Crocker,
>> OK.  Start shooting.

FX: Bang!

-- 
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
Tel: +44 161 436 6131                       
   Web: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl
Email: [email protected]      snail: 5 Clerewood Ave, CHEADLE, SK8 3JU, U.K.
PGP: 2C15F1A9      Fingerprint: 73 6D C2 51 93 A0 01 E7 65 E8 64 7E 14 A4 AB A5
_______________________________________________
NOTE WELL: This list operates according to 
http://mipassoc.org/dkim/ietf-list-rules.html

Reply via email to