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[msmtp-users] tls_hostname: TLS verification without fingerprint or FQDN



I do a lot of TLS verification via $tls_fingerprint. A usual lifetime of a certificate used to be a year, with Let's Encrypt it's currently 90 days. And that's a good thing. However, that makes the task of verifying fingerprints out-of-band and unautomated more work-intensive.

Most people just use a $tls_trust_file, either a system-wide one with many certs, or a specific one for the CA of the server. However, since this compares the domain name of $host with that in the certificate, this requires using a correct FQDN in msmtp config. Sometimes it's desirable to use different forms of $host, like an IP-address (IPs of mailservers rarely change, no point to check for a new one every few minutes via an unencrypted and unsigned protocol like DNS) - or a .onion address as Tor Hidden Service.

It would be awesome to combine the "best of two worlds." In order to use an IP or onion as $host combined with $tls_trust_file, I would propose to add something like a $tls_hostname setting which we will be verified against the hostname in the certificate.

This isn't completely new, f.e. unbound does something like this for DNS-over-TLS:

forward-addr: 1.1.1.1#cloudflare-dns.com

https://www.nlnetlabs.nl/bugs-script/show_bug.cgi?id=658#c10

What do you think about this?

Thanks, and keep up the good work!

--
ilf

If you upload your address book to "the cloud", I don't want to be in it.

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