Re: [MORG] Discuss and Comment positions on draft-ietf-morg-list-specialuse-05

Adrian Farrel <Adrian.Farrel@huawei.com> Wed, 15 December 2010 18:46 UTC

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Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2010 18:48:15 +0000
From: Adrian Farrel <Adrian.Farrel@huawei.com>
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Subject: Re: [MORG] Discuss and Comment positions on draft-ietf-morg-list-specialuse-05
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Hi,

Thanks for the update.

[SNIP]

> > Section 7
> >
>  >  LIST response: There are no security issues with conveying special-
>  >  use information to a client.
> >
> > Really. Doesn't the exchange of information imply that there is
> > potential to intercept the information. Knowledge of the message store
> > usage may be valuable to someone attempting to access messages.
> 
> If someone can tap into the IMAP stream, this extra bit of information
> (which will much of the time be guessable from the mailbox name
> anyway) is the least of anyone's concern.  I don't believe there are
> any security issues here beyond what exist in IMAP in the first place.
>  I certainly don't think it's the case that *this* is what will push
> someone over the edge to using TLS, where it was OK not to use TLS
> before.

A way to handle this is to point it out. It is not the document authors' job in
this sort of case to tell the deployer what to do. But it is the their job to
say, look, when you are doing this new feature you are increasing your exposure
and if that worries you, you need to do the security stuff.

That is, IMHO, it is not the authors' position to say how likely this is to tip
someone into using TLS. Just set out the facts and point out that TLS exists and
let people decide for themselves.

A