| Internet-Draft | Email Modification Versioning | October 2025 |
| Gondwana | Expires 20 April 2026 | [Page] |
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.¶
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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 message was replaced.¶
By producing a way to describe changes, the recipient can examine the sections which were changed and determine whether the change was malicious. Along with signatures which validate against previous versions, this can be used to allow signing systems to take accountability for only the version of the message which passed through their system.¶
This document describes an ordered set of header fields, each of which describes the message at a specific version, along with instructions on how to convert that version back to the previous version.¶
The format of the file is a tag-list. TODO: we need to decide where we pull tag-list from!¶
| Tag | Type | Value |
|---|---|---|
| v | position | Revision number (range: 1 to 100) |
| bh | base64 | Body Hash value for this revision |
| bin.n.m | base64 | Hash for the binary representation of the numbered mime part |
| b | body-recipe | Recipe to replicate the previous version of the message body |
| h.header | head-recipe | Recipe to replicate the previous version of the named header field |
The Body Recipe is a comma separated list of instructions. Each instruction starts with a prefix. Commas can be followed by optional whitespace.¶
| Prefix | Value | Action |
|---|---|---|
| c: | start-end | Copy the lines (inclusive) numbered from 1. |
| b: | base64 | Decode the base64 to get the value of a line to insert. |
| t: | text | Copy the exact text to get the value of a line to insert. |
| z | none | If present, says that changes have been made to the body which can not be described to get back to the earlier version, meaning the signing system takes accountability for the full content. |
The Header Recipe is a comma separated list of instructions. Each instruction starts with a prefix. Commas can be followed by optional whitespace.¶
While key names are case insensitive, implementations SHOULD create the header with the same case as the key.¶
| Prefix | Value | Action | |
|---|---|---|---|
| d: | integer | '*' | Delete the indexed (numbered from 1) copy of this header field, or all copies |
| b: | base64 | Decode the base64 to get the value of a header field to insert | |
| t: | text | Copy the exact text to get the value of a header field to insert | |
| z | none | If present, says that changes have been made to the named header field which can not be described to get back to the earlier version, meaning the signing system takes accountability for the full content of this message. |
Example for a message which has had Subject and From replaced, and Reply-To added.¶
From: brong@fastmailteam.com.dmarc.fail To: dkim2@lists.ietf.org Reply-To: dkim2@lists.ietf.org MailVersion: v=2; bh=[...]; h.Subject=d:*,t:A replacement for DKIM; h.From=d:*,b:YnJvbmdAZmFzdG1haWx0ZWFtLmNvbQo=; h.Reply-To=d:*¶
Example:¶
MailVersion: v=2; bh=[...]; b=c:1-500,c:520-520¶
Example - a URL was substituted in the content of the body (complex, but still easily doable!)¶
MailVersion: v=3; bh=[...]; b=c:1-500, b:PGEgaHJlZj0iaHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZXhhbXBsZS5jb20iPkV4YW1wbGU8L2E+Cg==, c:501-702¶
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 tag-values¶
Likewise, it is expected that 'c' will normally be used to copy lines directly from the new message, however in cases where a message needs to transit 7 bits systems cleanly, the email modifier may need to re-encode the octets of the original message, and this allows for doing so, albeit at some expense in header bloat!¶
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 for which there is a modification to the
headers at v=3 and a modification to both headers and body at v=2, to recreate the
original message you would first apply the header changes from v=3, then apply the
header and body changes for v=2. If this doesn't create a message which validates
with the initial v=1 hash, then some hop has corrupted the message.¶
change the header format to have unique keys, making it fit the ABNF for these types of headers.¶
allow easier editing of multi-value headers by always popping the first header and always prepending newly added headers.¶
change body to use d.0, d.1, etc with the program in the value, so that the program ordering is reliable regardless of the parser used to read the header.¶
original version¶
[[This section to be removed by RFC Editor]]¶