Re: [pkix] [smime] Key lookup service via draft-bhjl-x509-srv-00

["Miller, Timothy J." <[e-mail]>]

> Could Yahoo! (in this example) not provide a means for their users to update
> the key lookup service?  As the user is authenticated through their UI, he or
> she could upload the keys they want in a secure way.   (A realistic
> deployment caveat might be that Yahoo! puts some restrictions on e.g.
> Yahoo! might not support self-signed, weak key sizes etc).  One might argue
> Yahoo! wouldn't want to provide a key service, but then that's fine.  Without
> the SRV RR, things should be defined to fall back to the current state of
> things.

First, consider a user forwarding mail from Yahoo! to some other service, or using a single client to access multiple mailboxes but replying from a single address.  Who attests to what in these cases?

Second, by adding provider-side infrastructure you're increasing the cost of providing the mail service with no direct benefit to the mail provider himself.  There's an indirect benefit in which you're making the service slightly more attractive to a certain niche of users, but that's probably not even measurable as that niche is exceedingly small.  IOW, there's no incentive.

My advice is to keep it as simple as possible.  MUAs interact directly with users, so it should be MUAs that provide assurance, not mail providers.  This relieves the provider from having to worry about it, and users can opt in or out at will using any mail provider or key infrastructure they choose (up to and including roll-your-own).

-- T