Subject: WG Review: MTA Authorization Records in DNS (marid)

From: The IESG <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 24 Mar 2004 10:18:52 -0500

A new IETF working group has been proposed in the Application Area. The IESG has 
not made any determination as yet. The following description was submitted, 
and is provided for informational purposes only.  Please send your comments 
to the IESG mailing list ([email-masked]) by March 31st.

MTA Authorization Records in DNS (marid)
----------------------------------------

 Current Status: Proposed Working Group

 Description of Working Group:

     It would be useful for those maintaining domains and networks
     to be able to specify that individual hosts or nodes are authorized
     to act as MTAs for messages sent from those domains or networks.
     This working group will develop a DNS-based mechanism for
     storing and distributing information associated with that authorization.
     The primary current use case for this facility is to allow recipient
     MTAs to confirm that peer MTAs' actions are authorized by
     specific domains or networks. This will help combat a certain
     class of domain forgery common in spam. The solution chosen,
     however, should be generally useful for others which might
     check this authorization data.

     This working group is being chartered after extensive discussion of
     the issues in the IRTF's Anti-spam Research Group, and it is presumed
     that all active participants will be familiar with the documents produced
     there which describe the problem. It is not, however, an extension of
     that research group; it has no general writ to study spam or to
     produce specifications on the topic. It will not consider anti-spam abatement
     measures outside of the area of MTA authorization.

     Because individual messages may be associated with multiple domains
     (among them the domains present in the RFC2822 From, RFC2822 Sender,
     the SMTP Mail-From, and the SMTP EHLO), the first task of the working
     group will be to establish which of these identities should be
     associated with MTA authorization. Once this decision has been
     reached, it will limit the scope of further activity in this working group,
     and the chairs will rule out of order discussion related to schemes which
     use other identities as the basis of authorization.

     The groups Technical Advisors will help ensure that the semantics of
     proposals originating within this group are consonant with DNS
     standards and syntax, and they will be available for early cross-review
     to ensure that this work proceeds at an appropriate pace.

     Upon chartering of this working group, the IESG intends to request
     that the IRTF Chair and the Chairs of the IRTF's Anti-Spam Research Group
     seek publication of the listed input documents as Experimental RFCs, so that
     they are available on an archival basis. The IESG also intends
     to request that the RFC editor insert a note into each document
     informing the reader that the IETF's MARID working group has taken on
     the task of producing a standard in this area.