Re: Mailing lists - assumptions

On Fri, Apr 18, 2014 at 01:43:51PM -0500, Pete Resnick wrote:
> These ideas about mailing lists have been rattling around in my head these
> past couple of days, and they're based on a bunch of design assumptions. So
> I figured I'd post my list of assumptions and see if anybody thought any of
> them were off in space.
> 
> 1. The mailing list itself is going to have to participate in this in some
> way. There's no point in trying to design something for mailing lists that
> simply will not make any modifications.

We need to answer the question, explicitly, about whether or not the
sites which are currently honoring the DMARC p=reject policy can be
assumed to adopt whatever we come up with.  Because if the answer is
no, then your assumption/requirement #2 is flat-out impossible:

> 2. In the end, we want mailing lists to be able to send messages that say
> "From: [email protected]" and not have to say "From:
> [email protected]".

Because if originatingdomain.example.com still has a DEMARC p=rejet
policy, and there are sites that will be continuing to honor that
policy, then assumption/requirement #2 is going to result in huge
problems (just as we have huge problems today).

And even if eventually all of the DMARC p=reject sites (both the ones
setting the p=reject policy, and those that are honoring the p=reject
policy) will eventually climb on board, there is still the transition
window period that needs to be considered.

What I'm currently thinking about hacking together is a scheme where
the mailing list server will rewrite the from field to something like
this:

From: user+originatingdomain.example.com@dmark-remediation.mailing-list.org

.... where dmark-remediation.mailing-list.org is an MX record to an
automated bounce server that will explain to the user that they need
to really send their e-mail to [email protected] via
a 550 error.

That's because I'm assuming that the DMARC sites are going to be
intransigent, at least in the short term, so at least for some period
of time, possibly forever, I'm going to need to work around sites such
as yahoo.com.

If we go down this path as a long-term solution, as opposed to just a
short-term hack, we could imagine MUA's doing automated rewriting of
the from field to handle replies, and automatic address book
population.  Yes, it's an architectural hack, but so are NAT boxes,
and see how long they have lasted....

					- Ted

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