A method for describing changes made to an email

Internet-Draft	Email Modification Algebra	November 2024
Gondwana	Expires 7 May 2025	[Page]

Abstract

This memo describes a method for describing the changes made to an email during common email modifications, for example those caused by mailing lists and forwarders.¶

While this is general enough to be used for any changes, it is anticipated that this method will normally be used for removing added data rather than large complex changes.¶

Status of This Memo

This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.¶

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This Internet-Draft will expire on 7 May 2025.¶

Copyright Notice

This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (https://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document. Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must include Revised BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as described in the Revised BSD License.¶

1. Background and motivations

Currently, when an email is sent with a DKIM signature, the message can go through multiple forwarders and still be authenticated, however if a single change is made to a header which is covered by the signature, or to the body, then the signature no longer validates - and it's impossible for the receiver to know what was changed, or even if the entire messages content was replaced by an attacker.¶

By producing a way to describe changes, the recipient can examine the sections which were changed and determine whether the change was malicious. Because each step signs its own changes in DKIM2, this also allows the recipient to identify exactly which intermediary introduced the malicious change, and adjust their reputation accordingly.¶

2. Difference format - headers

For headers, the format is to completely replace all headers with a particular name. For example if you replace the subject and from address in an email, then you need to include the complete old headers for each of those:¶

Header: "DKIM2-Diff-Header:"¶

Table 1
Command	Input
i	DKIM2 matching header number
b	replace headers with base64 octet value
t	replace headers with raw text characters value

Example for a message which has had Subject and From replaced, and Reply-To added.¶

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Reply-To: [email protected]
DKIM2-Diff-Header: i=3;
                   t=Subject,A replacement for DKIM;
                   b=From,YnJvbmdAZmFzdG1haWx0ZWFtLmNvbQo=;
                   t=Reply-To

3. Difference format - body

This difference format for the body is inspired by [RFC3284] (The VCDIFF Generic Differencing and Compression Data Format).¶

Since the transport for the differences is a 7-bit mime header, this format has been made simple and human readable. It is a simple program describing ranges of data to copy from the output to recreate the input.¶

Header: "DKIM2-Diff-Body:"¶

Table 2
Command	Input
i	DKIM2 matching header number
c	copy offset-length from new-message body
b	insert octets from base64 encoded value
t	insert raw text of value

Example:¶

DKIM2-Diff-Body: i=2;
                 c=0-19452;
                 c=20312-150

Example - appended to some base64 content; so we need to add back the last few characters (and the mime trailer)¶

DKIM2-Diff-Body: i=2;
                 c=0-19452;
                 t=aX==;
                 c=20312-150

Example - a URL was substituted in the content of the body (complex, but still easily doable!)¶

DKIM2-Diff-Body: i=3;
                 c=0-3542;
                 b=PGEgaHJlZj0iaHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZXhhb
                   XBsZS5jb20iPkV4YW1wbGU8L2E+Cg==;
                 c=3623-84743

The decision whether to use 'b' or 't' is up to the system creating the diff, however 't' has a limited set of characters that are safe to use in headers.¶

4. Signature coverage.

Each DKIM2 signature implicitly covers all DKIM2-Diff-Body and DKIM2-Diff-Header headers with an i=N value for the same and lower N values as the i= on the DKIM2 header.¶

5. Iterative application

To get back to the original message and confirm that it was unchanged, it is necessary to apply this algorith iteratively.¶

For example if you receive a message at i=7 for which there is a modification to the headers at i=5 and a modification to both headers and body at i=3, to recreate the original message you would first apply the header changes from i=5, then apply the header and body changes for i=3. If this doesn't create a message which validates with the initial i=1 signature, then some hop has corrupted the message, and you can check every single DKIM signature in reverse to find the first one where the message no longer validates.¶

A method for describing changes made to an email

Abstract

Status of This Memo

Copyright Notice

Table of Contents

1. Background and motivations

2. Difference format - headers

3. Difference format - body

4. Signature coverage.

5. Iterative application

6. Security

7. IANA Considerations

8. Informative References

Appendix A. Changes from Earlier Versions

Author's Address