Network Working Group E. Allman
Request for Comments: 4871 Sendmail, Inc.
Obsoletes: 4870 J. Callas
Category: Standards Track PGP Corporation
M. Delany
M. Libbey
Yahoo! Inc
J. Fenton
M. Thomas
Cisco Systems, Inc.
May 2007
DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) Signatures
Status of This Memo
This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for the
Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for
improvements. Please refer to the current edition of the "Internet
Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1) for the standardization state
and status of this protocol. Distribution of this memo is unlimited.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (C) The IETF Trust (2007).
Abstract
DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) defines a domain-level
authentication framework for email using public-key cryptography and
key server technology to permit verification of the source and
contents of messages by either Mail Transfer Agents (MTAs) or Mail
User Agents (MUAs). The ultimate goal of this framework is to permit
a signing domain to assert responsibility for a message, thus
protecting message signer identity and the integrity of the messages
they convey while retaining the functionality of Internet email as it
is known today. Protection of email identity may assist in the
global control of "spam" and "phishing".
Allman, et al. Standards Track [Page 1]
RFC 4871 DKIM Signatures May 2007
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.1. Signing Identity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.2. Scalability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.3. Simple Key Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2. Terminology and Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.1. Signers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.2. Verifiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.3. Whitespace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.4. Common ABNF Tokens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.5. Imported ABNF Tokens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.6. DKIM-Quoted-Printable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3. Protocol Elements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.1. Selectors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.2. Tag=Value Lists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3.3. Signing and Verification Algorithms . . . . . . . . . . . 11
3.4. Canonicalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
3.5. The DKIM-Signature Header Field . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
3.6. Key Management and Representation . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
3.7. Computing the Message Hashes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
3.8. Signing by Parent Domains . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
4. Semantics of Multiple Signatures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
4.1. Example Scenarios . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
4.2. Interpretation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
5. Signer Actions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
5.1. Determine Whether the Email Should Be Signed and by
Whom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
5.2. Select a Private Key and Corresponding Selector
Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
5.3. Normalize the Message to Prevent Transport Conversions . . 35
5.4. Determine the Header Fields to Sign . . . . . . . . . . . 36
5.5. Recommended Signature Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
5.6. Compute the Message Hash and Signature . . . . . . . . . . 39
5.7. Insert the DKIM-Signature Header Field . . . . . . . . . . 40
6. Verifier Actions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
6.1. Extract Signatures from the Message . . . . . . . . . . . 41
6.2. Communicate Verification Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
6.3. Interpret Results/Apply Local Policy . . . . . . . . . . . 47
7. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
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