Subject: [perpass] blast from the past

From: "Scott O. Bradner" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 28 Jan 2014 18:39:29 -0500

I just remembered that we talked about setting a direction towards protection quite a while ago in RFC 1752
(the IPv6 recommendation)

   We feel that an improvement in the basic level of security in the
   Internet is vital to its continued success.  Users must be able to
   assume that their exchanges are safe from tampering, diversion and
   exposure.  Organizations that wish to use the Internet to conduct
   business must be able to have a high level of confidence in the
   identity of their correspondents and in the security of their
   communications.  The goal is to provide strong protection as a matter
   of course throughout the Internet.

Scott

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From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 29 Jan 2014 12:53:18 +1300

>    of course throughout the Internet.

I also noticed that we said this in RFC 1958:

   6.2 It is highly desirable that Internet carriers protect the privacy
   and authenticity of all traffic, but this is not a requirement of the
   architecture.  Confidentiality and authentication are the
   responsibility of end users and must be implemented in the protocols
   used by the end users. Endpoints should not depend on the
   confidentiality or integrity of the carriers. Carriers may choose to
   provide some level of protection, but this is secondary to the
   primary responsibility of the end users to protect themselves.

     Brian

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From: Douglas Otis <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 30 Jan 2014 11:37:09 -0800

>   primary responsibility of the end users to protect themselves.

Dear Brian,

Agreed.  In addition, lack of SMTP client authentication is a primary reason IPv6 email remains difficult service to defend.

Endpoint authentication is possible.  StartTLS or TLS can exchange client and server certificates as a means to authenticate these endpoints while also protecting transactions from third-party monitoring.  If only...

DKIM authenticates signed portions of a message in a manner independent of the sender without ensuring proper delivery or trivial checks protecting against message spoofing.  Nearly all email is exchanged as clear text where just the sender IP address offers a practical means to identify and block abuse.  IPv6 email defense remains problematic, where attempts often employ various DNS derived authorization extensions which might even offer greater exposures.  Reliance on IP addresses with insecure DNS exposes email to difficult to detect forms of router and DNS spoofing which may permit undetected MiTM attacks.

Regards,
Douglas Otis