[arch-dev-public] Making our mailing lists DMARC/DKIM safe (drop subject prefix)
Hi, First some background: DKIM allows a mail server to sign mails similar to GPG, except that the public key is distributed via DNS. DMARC allows a domain to define a policy (do nothing, quarantine or reject) for mails that do not possess a valid DKIM signature (modified content, spam mail without a sig, ..). DKIM signatures sign both, the body and the header of the mail. The header fields that are signed differ between setups, but generally it's at least From, To and Subject. Currently, most/all of our mailing lists prepend the listname to the subject, thus invalidating any DKIM signature. Some lists also add a footer to the body of the message (arch-events, possibly more). I propose that we configure our lists not to alter messages in any way so that existing DKIM signatures remain valid. This would mean that the list name will no longer be in the subject so everyone who currently uses that to filter list traffic would have to switch to using the List-ID header. This is also a much more reliable way to filter list traffic since sometimes mails have multiple tags in the subject if they are sent to multiple lists. Also private messages may still contain the subject tag even if they were never sent via the list. I don't see any benefit in having the listname in the subject since mails are generally filtered into dedicated mailboxes per list anyway. Changing the subject just means that when browsing that mailbox all subjects start with the same useless text. I know multiple lists that have already switched to keeping mails as-is. Among them are the bugtraq and cgit lists as well as some official and third-party dovecot and postfix related lists. If this proposal is accepted by us, I will send it out to all our lists with a 2 week lead time before I start changing anything so that people have a chance to update their filters if necessary. Opinions? PS: I'd prefer to keep discussion on arch-devops@lists.archlinux.org. I'm just posting this to arch-dev-public so all devs/TUs are aware of it. Florian
On 27/05, Florian Pritz wrote:
I don't see any benefit in having the listname in the subject since mails are generally filtered into dedicated mailboxes per list anyway. Changing the subject just means that when browsing that mailbox all subjects start with the same useless text.
I'm honestly doubtful that a majority of Arch users filter mailinglists to different mailboxes. Either way, we could technically set it up to require the user to specify the list name in the subject, the same way that you currently have to specify the project name in the subject to send patches to arch-projects@. Overall I'm +/-0 though. -- Sincerely, Johannes Löthberg PGP Key ID: 0x50FB9B273A9D0BB5 https://theos.kyriasis.com/~kyrias/
On Fri, 27 May 2016 17:36:08 +0200 Florian Pritz <bluewind@xinu.at> wrote:
Opinions?
Got some private replies. Apparently some people do not filter their list mail. I never thought about that given I am subscribed to way too many lists for this to be bearable. I guess that's perfectly fine if you are only on one or a few low traffic lists though. Another issues I didn't think about is that the reply-to header is recommended to be signed by the RFC (if it is set) and our lists modify that header. I guess that's something even more people are used to than the subject prefix. I'll look into having mailman change the From address and resign the mail if that doesn't already work. I think it should, but I'll need to test it. Changing the list configs is probably to invasive so I'm dropping this. Thanks for the feedback guys! PS: Also sending this to arch-dev-public again so everyone sees the mail. Florian
participants (2)
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Florian Pritz
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Johannes Löthberg