On Wed, Oct 13, 2010 at 2:37 PM, Murray S. Kucherawy <[email protected]> wrote:
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] 
>> On Behalf Of Jeff Macdonald
>> Sent: Wednesday, October 13, 2010 11:27 AM
>> To: DKIM
>> Subject: Re: [ietf-dkim] detecting header mutations after signing
>>
>> <rant>
>> Count me as one of those who was confused early on about what DKIM
>> provides. DKIM seems to make assurances to message integrity. But it
>> doesn't. I think the reason why many think it does is because of the
>> body hash. It is trying to do to much. It should just provide an
>> identifier that can be verified. Instead of using the body for
>> hashing, use the Message-ID header along with the Date header and just
>> hash that. That way most folks would understand DKIM is just providing
>> an Identifier.
>> </rant>
>
> Then you send me a piece of signed mail, I change everything except the 
> Message-ID and Date, and send it to someone else.  And the verifier will 
> green-light it, meaning you've taken responsibility for it.  Are you OK with 
> that?
>
> My way of thinking about this is that verification of a message is equivalent 
> to collecting all the pieces (header, body, signature) and coming to you and 
> saying "Do you take responsibility for this?"  If I get your public key from 
> DNS and everything lines up, you're implicitly saying "yes".
>
> Now, if I remove the whole body and most of the header from what I'm 
> presenting to you for that question, you're now possibly saying "yes" to 
> content you didn't create.  Are you OK with that?

The only thing I'm willing to say "yes" to is that I created that
identifier and nothing more.

Enhancements to my rant would be to include the To: header as well.

The point is DKIM provides a verifiable identifier. If there is
anything in the spec that leads one to believe it provides more than
that, it needs to be fixed.

But like I said, I was ranting.

-- 
Jeff Macdonald
Ayer, MA

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