Thanks Kurt.  Let me see if I can articulate our reasons for proposing DMARC as 
the signaling mechanism more clearly.


  1.  Although this proposal appears to be an MUA feature, it has meaningful 
relevance to the typical transfer agent as well.  If it is fair to summarize 
DMARC as a means for reducing the delivery of forged email then this proposal 
fits in nicely.  If an MTA can determine for example that a domain enforces a 
policy of signing all outbound messages (by the email sender, not using DKIM) 
and can easily locate the sender’s signing  key with an appropriate chain of 
trust then the MTA can make a reliable decision about whether that email 
originated from the sender’s domain.  This “feels” very similar to the way we 
use SPF and DKIM now.
  2.  Signaling mechanisms are most effective when they can leverage a 
beachhead already established by a deployed technology.  DMARC has a growing 
deployed base with building momentum so it makes an attractive mechanism for 
signaling.

If a domain originating email signals a policy that all outbound messages are 
signed and the recipient is unable to validate that signature then the 
recipient should do something interesting with the message.  Bear in mind that 
the domain originating the records will have published the keys using a DNSSEC 
signed domain and will have published keys/certs for the users who originate 
mail from the domain.  There would need to be a DNS resolution failure in order 
for a recipient to not be able to locate the key.  Although there are currently 
still some deficiencies in the DNSSEC deployment, the operational picture for 
DNSSEC is continuing to improve. This proposal anticipates DNSSEC reaching 
critical mass.
--
Glen Wiley
Principal Engineer
Verisign, Inc.
(571) 230-7917

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6A0F DC65 2354 9946 C63A

From: "Kurt Andersen (b)" <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
Date: Tuesday, February 2, 2016 at 7:51 PM
To: Wiley Glen <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
Cc: "[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>" 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
Subject: Re: [dmarc-ietf] using DMARC to signal policy for email 
canonicalization, signing and encryption

On Tue, Feb 2, 2016 at 3:56 PM, Wiley, Glen 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
. . .we have put together an approach that lets a zone owner signal the policy 
that is used for their domain by adding a few keywords to the DMARC record.

The draft is at: 
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-osterweil-dmarc-dane-names/

Section 1.2 of your I-D says:
The previous specification of DMARC is almost entirely relevant to the MTA and 
transparent to the end user.  The additions in this document are also relevant 
to the MUA. . .

I'm not sure that mixing the features to be used by the MUA into the MTA 
oriented specs for DMARC makes sense. For instance what would a receiver be 
expected to do if they attempted to lookup an encoded recipient and could not 
find the cited record? Would you expect them to enforce a non-pass policy 
against that message?

I think it would be more appropriate to communicate this information at a 
distinct end service point in the DNS - for example _mailenc.<domain> rather 
than overloading the DMARC semantics with something that only has a peripheral 
relationship to message domain authentication. Your proposal seems more in the 
vein of "Encryption-Based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance".

--Kurt Andersen
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