responding to DMARC breakage

Sun Apr 13 14:01:47 UTC 2014

Matthew Petach wrote:
>
>
>
> On Sat, Apr 12, 2014 at 10:12 AM, Miles Fidelman 
> <mfidelman at meetinghouse.net <mailto:mfidelman at meetinghouse.net>> wrote:
>
>     Valdis.Kletnieks at vt.edu <mailto:Valdis.Kletnieks at vt.edu> wrote:
>
>         On Sat, 12 Apr 2014 10:12:09 -0400, Miles Fidelman said:
>
>             It occurs to me that Yahoo's deployment of DMARC p=reject,
>             and the
>             choice of several big mail operators to honor that, has
>             created a
>             situation not unlike a really routing table or nameserver,
>             snafu ---
>
>         It's more like a peering war.  Time for somebody to either
>         bake a cake,
>         or find alternate transit providers.
>
>
>     Aaargghhh - what a horrible, but accurate analogy.  Worse probably
>     - more like a peering war with a large broadband carrier, at the
>     edge, where it's harder to find alternate transport.
>
>
> So, if we stretch the analogy to near-breaking-point,
> would that make Yahoo the Comcast of the email
> world... or the Level3?  And depending on that answer,
> would the community think that a similar response of
> petitioning the government for more oversight and control
> would be warranted?  Or would it be just as much out of
> line in this case as it is in the Level3-Comcast fight?

That's a big concern of mine, and one that's somewhat reflected in 
current discussions re. NTIA stepping away from its oversight role of 
ICANN/IANA.  It strikes me that there are a growing number of issues 
that beg for some kind of institutionalized response and recourse - 
peering, DMARC, others - but we don't have any in place. That's the 
point at which people start suing each other and looking for government 
intervention.  Sigh....

In this case:
- if the tv tower 2 miles from here starts interfering with stuff, we 
call the FCC, and it gets fixed (particularly if it starts interfering 
with, for example, police radios)
- various law enforcement agencies go after the bigger spam operations, 
and DDoS exploiters
- but... Yahoo publishes a p=reject DNS record - causing, effectively, a 
massive DDoS - and..... what?

Miles

-- 
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.   .... Yogi Berra