Comments inline.

- Phillip

> On Aug 18, 2025, at 3:50 PM, John R Levine <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> 
>> Perhaps I explained it badly. I'm saying that there may be parties which are 
>> interested in supporting both DKIM2 and these unobtrusive signatures. In 
>> which case, rather than having to support two entirely separate schemes, 
>> they could support a single scheme (or at least two very similar schemes), 
>> where the only significant difference is in how keys are distributed.
> 
> DKIM2 signs the whole message.  The unobtrusive signatures are a wrapper 
> around PGP signatures which sign the body of the message, or in this case, a 
> body which is a wrapped copy of a message.

I believe signing the headers is also a goal of unobtrusive signatures? The 
current draft says:

5.1. Always Use Header Protection

A message signed with an unobtrusive signature MUST always use 
[I-D.ietf-lamps-header-protection], signing every header field known to the 
sending MUA at message composition time.

The discussion at 
https://www.openpgp.org/community/email-summit/2025/minutes/#cleartext-non-disturbing-signatures-in-headers-dkg
 also implies that headers are expected to always be signed (with DKG pointing 
out that DKIM style signing would also cover outer headers [or IMO, there would 
be no need for "inner" headers]).
> 
> There is no chance that DKIM2 is going to use PGP signing, so how about if 
> you go ask people if they'd be OK with unobtrusive signatures that are not 
> even sort of like PGP?

I'm also not saying that DKIM2 should use PGP signing, or that unobtrusive 
signatures can't use PGP signing. I think the mechanism for how to normalize a 
message for signing, how to determine/communicate what is signed, and how to 
attach that signature to a message is largely independent of the cryptographic 
scheme.

DKIM 2 can continue using its keys, unobtrusive signatures can continue using 
PGP keys. Unobtrusive signatures could also use S/MIME keys if there's appetite 
for that. The draft also seems to hold this position:

It is specified initially for [OpenPGP], but can be easily extended to be used 
with [CMS] or other signature formats.

> 
> R's,
> John
> 
> PS:
> 
>> First of all, I do not think these signatures need to be limited to PGP. 
>> That's the specific technology that this idea came out of, but I think the 
>> goal is more generalizable.
> 
> It would be really helpful if you could get the authors of the current draft 
> to write a strawman suggesting how that would work. It is my impression that 
> they feel rather strongly about PGP.

I believe Andrew and Kai have both been commenting on this thread. Please jump 
in if I've misunderstood the motivation of the draft.

The one thing I am saying that I think deviates from the current draft, is that 
I think ensuring that this plays well with DKIM2 should be an explicit goal. 
Very possibly the existing draft already accomplishes that (not totally sure, 
since I find it a little harder to reason about two separate signing mechanisms 
that have some interplay), but I think sharing some mechanical pieces with 
DKIM2 guarantees that, and also provides some other benefits.

> 
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