Quick question re TLSA lookup error

[Karl Semich]

hi

Under the Obama and Trump administrations, the US State Dept had a phone
> number for journalists to contact. It has since been removed; the
> website now instructs: email PAPressDuty at state.gov.
>
> I looked up the old State Dept phone number and called it. The voice
> recording told me the same thing: email PAPressDuty at state.gov.
>

this situation sounds like news itself.  I wonder what influences resulted
in it.


> Monday I emailed.
> Didn't get a reply until yesterday.
>
> The reply I got was (among other error message stuff that appears
> general/unhelpful): "<PAPressDuty at state.gov>: TLSA lookup error for
> stimson.state.gov:25"
>

i'm too outdated to know the answer in depth, but of course 25 is SMTP.

TLSA is briefly mentioned at
https://tools.ietf.org/id/draft-fanf-dane-smtp-04.html from a websearch for
"smtp tlsa".

Looks like whatever server sent your reply was unable to verify the
identity of the referenced mail server, because the DNS servers they
contacted didn't validate it.  This would most likely be an issue with the
dns servers or maintenance of the domain, but is also possibly something
malicious in the mail communication path.

But I only glanced at the first paragraph of that document.

Others on this list are more familiar with TLSA than I am.  Be nice to know
how accurate my reply is.


> So I'm wondering if anyone can interpret the technical significance of
> such an error for me.
>
>
> Predictable paint-by-numbers opinion blatherings by crazed and/or paid
> losers will be ignored.
>
> Doug
>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: text/html
Size: 2919 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://lists.cpunks.org/pipermail/cypherpunks/attachments/20211025/5e2207aa/attachment.txt>