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Message Authentication Signature Standards
charter-ietf-mass-01

Document Charter Message Authentication Signature Standards WG (mass)
Title Message Authentication Signature Standards
Last updated 2006-01-26
State Approved
WG State Concluded
IESG Responsible AD (None)
Charter edit AD (None)
Send notices to (None)

charter-ietf-mass-01

Several proposals have recently been published for the signing of
messages,primarily email messages, to deter source address spoofing.
These include:
DomainKeys, draft-delany-domainkeys-base-00.txt
Identified Internet Mail, draft-fenton-identified-mail-00.txt
E-mail Postmarks, http://www.lessspam.org/EmailPostmarks.pdf

While the prevention of message spoofing is also a goal of the MARID
working group, cryptographic approaches to this problem are explicitly
outside the charter of MARID. Nevertheless, many that are familiar
with the address-based authorization approaches MARID is considering
consider them to be an interim step until message signing is deployed,
or as a complementary technology to be used along with message signing.

This BOF (and IETF Working Group formation, if there is sufficient
interest) will focus on standards for message signing, including:
- Signature format (syntax) and binding to message source dress
- Key management procedures
- Selection of message content to be signed (headers, etc.)
- Mechanisms for minimizing breakage as messages pass through the
mail
system
- Operation of message signing in concert with address-based
authorization