Re: [dmarc-ietf] Nonexistent Domain Policy was: Re: Working Group Last Call: draft-ietf-dmarc-psd

[Alessandro Vesely <[e-mail]>]

On Sun 21/Jul/2019 18:53:35 +0200 Scott Kitterman wrote:
>>
>>> Keep in mind that senders do send from what we call non-existent domains for
>>> reasons that seem good and sufficient to them.  Let's take that as a fact,
>>> whether it makes sense to us or not.
>>
>>
>> Fair enough.  Let me quote the current spec:
>>
>> A.4.  Domain Existence Test
>>
>>   A common practice among MTA operators, and indeed one documented in
>>   [ADSP], is a test to determine domain existence prior to any more
>>   expensive processing.  This is typically done by querying the DNS for
>>   MX, A, or AAAA resource records for the name being evaluated and
>>   assuming that the domain is nonexistent if it could be determined
>>   that no such records were published for that domain name.
>>
>>   The original pre-standardization version of this protocol included a
>>   mandatory check of this nature.  It was ultimately removed, as the
>>   method's error rate was too high without substantial manual tuning
>>   and heuristic work.  There are indeed use cases this work needs to
>>   address where such a method would return a negative result about a
>>   domain for which reporting is desired, such as a registered domain
>>   name that never sends legitimate mail and thus has none of these
>>   records present in the DNS.
> 
> Yes, but that was for a different use case.  It was , AIUI, considered that
> reporting could be skipped on such 'non-existant' domains, but that proved
> problematic since such domains as these are used in mail.

Wasn't it for rejecting non-existent domains?  That is, IIRC, <sciencefiction>
as if there were a root DMARC record (_dmarc.) with np=reject.</sciencefiction>


> 'np' doesn't have the same issue.  It uses non-existence in a positive (do
> some processing) not a negative sense (reporting can be skipped for these),
> so the problems described in that paragraph are not only not relevant, the
> paragraph supports the case for 'np'.


Uh?  (I don't understand your parenthesized phrase...)


At any rate, the first paragraph gives a definition of non-existence equal to
the one we've been discussing these days, doesn't it?


Best
Ale
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