Email Authentication Status Codes
draft-ietf-appsawg-email-auth-codes-05

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Network Working Group                                       M. Kucherawy
Internet-Draft                                             July 21, 2014
Updates: 7208 (if approved)
Intended status: Standards Track
Expires: January 22, 2015

                   Email Authentication Status Codes
                 draft-ietf-appsawg-email-auth-codes-05

Abstract

   There is at present no way to return a status code to an email client
   that indicates a message is being rejected or deferred specifically
   because of email authentication failures.  This document registers
   codes for this purpose.

Status of This Memo

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

   Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
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   This Internet-Draft will expire on January 22, 2015.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2014 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.

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Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
   2.  Key Words . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
   3.  New Enhanced Status Codes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
     3.1.  DKIM Failure Codes  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
     3.2.  SPF Failure Codes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
     3.3.  Reverse DNS Failure Code  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
     3.4.  Multiple Authentication Failures Code . . . . . . . . . . . 5
   4.  General Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
   5.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
   6.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
   7.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
   Appendix A.  Acknowledgments  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

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1.  Introduction

   [RFC3463] introduced Enhanced Mail System Status Codes, and [RFC5248]
   created an IANA registry for these.

   [RFC6376] and [RFC7208] introduced, respectively, DomainKeys
   Identified Mail (DKIM) and Sender Policy Framework (SPF), two
   protocols for conducting message authentication.  Another common
   email acceptance test is the reverse Domain Name System (DNS) check
   on an email client's IP address, as described in Section 3 of
   [RFC7001].

   The current set of enhanced status codes does not include any code
   for indicating that a message is being rejected or deferred due to
   local policy reasons related to any of these mechanisms.  This is
   potentially useful information to agents that need more than
   rudimentary handling information about the reason a message was
   rejected on receipt.  This document introduces enhanced status codes
   for reporting those cases to clients.

   Section 3.2 updates [RFC7208], as new enhanced status codes relevant
   to that specification are being registered and recommended for use.

2.  Key Words

   The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
   "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and
   "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in
   [RFC2119].

3.  New Enhanced Status Codes

   The following new enhanced status codes are defined:

3.1.  DKIM Failure Codes

      Code:               X.7.20
      Sample Text:        No valid DKIM signature found
      Associated basic status code:  550
      Description:        This status code is returned when a message
                          did not contain a valid DKIM signature,
                          contrary to local policy requirements.