SMTP Service Extension for Authentication
draft-siemborski-rfc2554bis-09
The information below is for an old version of the document that is already published as an RFC.
| Document | Type | RFC Internet-Draft (individual in gen area) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Authors | Rob Siemborski , Alexey Melnikov | ||
| Last updated | 2020-01-21 (Latest revision 2007-04-03) | ||
| Stream | Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) | ||
| Formats | plain text htmlized pdfized bibtex | ||
| Reviews | |||
| Stream | WG state | (None) | |
| Document shepherd | (None) | ||
| IESG | IESG state | RFC 4954 (Proposed Standard) | |
| Consensus boilerplate | Unknown | ||
| Telechat date | (None) | ||
| Responsible AD | Lisa M. Dusseault | ||
| Send notices to | (None) |
draft-siemborski-rfc2554bis-09
Network Working Group Robert Siemborski
INTERNET-DRAFT Google, Inc.
Intended status: Standards Track Alexey Melnikov
Obsoletes: RFC 2554 (if approved) Isode Limited
Updates: RFC 3463 April 2007
Expires: October 2007
SMTP Service Extension for Authentication
<draft-siemborski-rfc2554bis-09.txt>
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Copyright Notice
Copyright (C) The IETF Trust (2007).
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Abstract
This document defines a Simple Mail Transport Protocol (SMTP)
extension whereby an SMTP client may indicate an authentication
mechanism to the server, perform an authentication protocol
exchange, and optionally negotiate a security layer for subsequent
protocol interactions during this session. This extension includes
a profile of the Simple Authentication and Security Layer (SASL) for
SMTP.
This document obsoletes RFC 2554.
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1. Introduction
This document defines a Simple Mail Transport Protocol (SMTP)
extension whereby an SMTP client may indicate an authentication
mechanism to the server, perform an authentication protocol
exchange, optionally negotiate a security layer for subsequent
protocol interactions during this session and, during a mail
transaction, optionally specify a mailbox associated with the
identity which submitted the message to the mail delivery system.
This extension includes a profile of the Simple Authentication and
Security Layer (SASL) for SMTP.
When compared to RFC 2554, this document deprecates use of the 538
response code, adds a new Enhanced Status Code, adds a requirement
to support SASLprep profile for preparing authorization identities,
recommends use of RFC 3848 transmission types in the Received trace
header field, and clarifies interaction with SMTP PIPELINING
[PIPELINING] extension.
2. How to Read This Document
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
document are to be interpreted as described in [KEYWORDS].
In examples, "C:" and "S:" indicate lines sent by the client and
server, respectively.
3. The Authentication Service Extension
1. The name of this [SMTP] service extension is "Authentication"
2. The EHLO keyword value associated with this extension is
"AUTH"
3. The AUTH EHLO keyword contains as a parameter a space
separated list of the names of available [SASL] mechanisms.
The list of available mechanisms MAY change after a successful
STARTTLS command [SMTP-TLS].
4. A new [SMTP] verb "AUTH" is defined.
5. An optional parameter using the keyword "AUTH" is added to the
MAIL FROM command, and extends the maximum line length of the
MAIL FROM command by 500 characters.
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6. This extension is appropriate for the submission protocol
[SUBMIT].
4. The AUTH Command
AUTH mechanism [initial-response]
Arguments:
mechanism: A string identifying a [SASL] authentication
mechanism.
initial-response: An optional initial client response. If
present, this response MUST be encoded as described in Section
4 of [BASE64] or contain a single character "=".
Restrictions:
After an AUTH command has been successfully completed, no more
AUTH commands may be issued in the same session. After a
successful AUTH command completes, a server MUST reject any
further AUTH commands with a 503 reply.
The AUTH command is not permitted during a mail transaction.
An AUTH command issued during a mail transaction MUST be
rejected with a 503 reply.
Discussion:
The AUTH command initiates a [SASL] authentication exchange
between the client and the server. The client identifies the
SASL mechanism to use with the first parameter of the AUTH
command. If the server supports the requested authentication
mechanism, it performs the SASL exchange to authenticate the
user. Optionally, it also negotiates a security layer for
subsequent protocol interactions during this session. If the
requested authentication mechanism is invalid (e.g. is not
supported or requires an encryption layer), the server rejects
the AUTH command with a 504 reply, and if it supports the
[ESMTP-CODES] extension it SHOULD return a 5.5.4 enhanced
response code.
The SASL authentication exchange consists of a series of
server challenges and client responses that are specific to
the chosen [SASL] mechanism.
A server challenge is sent as a 334 reply with the text part
containing the [BASE64] encoded string supplied by the SASL
mechanism. This challenge MUST NOT contain any text other
than the BASE64 encoded challenge.
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A client response consists of a line containing a [BASE64]
encoded string. If the client wishes to cancel the
authentication exchange, it issues a line with a single "*".
If the server receives such a response, it MUST reject the
AUTH command by sending a 501 reply.
The optional initial response argument to the AUTH command is
used to save a round trip when using authentication mechanisms
that support an initial client response. If the initial
response argument is omitted and the chosen mechanism requires
an initial client response, the server MUST proceed as defined
in section 5.1 of [SASL]. In SMTP, a server challenge that
contains no data is defined as a 334 reply with no text part.
Note that there is still a space following the reply code, so
the complete response line is "334 ".
Note that the AUTH command is still subject to the line length
limitations defined in [SMTP]. If use of the initial response
argument would cause the AUTH command to exceed this length,
the client MUST NOT use the initial response parameter (and
instead proceed as defined in Section 5.1 of [SASL]).
If the client is transmitting an initial response of zero
length, it MUST instead transmit the response as a single
equals sign ("="). This indicates that the response is
present, but contains no data.
If the client uses an initial-response argument to the AUTH
command with a SASL mechanism in which the client does not
begin the authentication exchange, the server MUST reject the
AUTH command with a 501 reply. Servers using the enhanced
status codes extension [ESMTP-CODES] SHOULD return an enhanced
status code of 5.7.0 in this case.
If the server cannot [BASE64] decode any client response, it
MUST reject the AUTH command with a 501 reply (and an enhanced
status code of 5.5.2). If the client cannot BASE64 decode any
of the server's challenges, it MUST cancel the authentication
using the "*" response. In particular, servers and clients
MUST reject (and not ignore) any character not explicitly
allowed by the BASE64 alphabet, and MUST reject any sequence
of BASE64 characters that contains the pad character ('=')
anywhere other than the end of the string (e.g. "=AAA" and
"AAA=BBB" are not allowed).
Note that these [BASE64] strings can be much longer than
normal SMTP commands. Clients and servers MUST be able to
handle the maximum encoded size of challenges and responses
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generated by their supported authentication mechanisms. This
requirement is independent of any line length limitations the
client or server may have in other parts of its protocol
implementation. (At the time of writing of this document,
12288 is considered to be sufficiently big line length limit
for handling of deployed authentication mechanisms.) If,
during an authentication exchange, the server receives a line
that is longer than the server's authentication buffer, the
server fails the AUTH command with the 500 reply. Servers
using the enhanced status codes extension [ESMTP-CODES] SHOULD
return an enhanced status code of 5.5.6 in this case.
The authorization identity generated by this [SASL] exchange
is a "simple username" (in the sense defined in [SASLprep]),
and both client and server SHOULD (*) use the [SASLprep]
profile of the [StringPrep] algorithm to prepare these names
for transmission or comparison. If preparation of the
authorization identity fails or results in an empty string
(unless it was transmitted as the empty string), the server
MUST fail the authentication.
(*) - Future revision of this specification may change this
requirement to MUST. Currently the SHOULD is used in order to
avoid breaking the majority of existing implementations.
If the server is unable to authenticate the client, it SHOULD
reject the AUTH command with a 535 reply unless a more
specific error code is appropriate. Should the client
successfully complete the exchange, the SMTP server issues a
235 reply. (Note that SMTP protocol doesn't support SASL
feature for returning additional data with the successful
outcome.) These status codes, along with others defined by
this extension, are discussed in Section 6 of this document.
If a security layer is negotiated during the SASL exchange, it
takes effect for the client on the octet immediately following
the CRLF that concludes the last response generated by the
client. For the server, it takes effect immediately following
the CRLF of its success reply.
When a security layer takes effect, the SMTP protocol is reset
to the initial state (the state in SMTP after a server issues
a 220 service ready greeting). The server MUST discard any
knowledge obtained from the client, such as the EHLO argument,
which was not obtained from the SASL negotiation itself.
Likewise, the client MUST discard any knowledge obtained from
the server, such as the list of SMTP service extensions, which
was not obtained from the SASL negotiation itself (Note that a
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client MAY compare the advertised SASL mechanisms before and
after authentication in order to detect an active down-
negotiation attack).
The client SHOULD send an EHLO command as the first command
after a successful SASL negotiation which results in the
enabling of a security layer.
When both [TLS] and SASL security layers are in effect, when
sending data the TLS encoding MUST be applied after the SASL
encoding, regardless of the order in which the layers were
negotiated.
The service name specified by this protocol's profile of SASL
is "smtp". This service name is also to be used for the
[SUBMIT] protocol.
If an AUTH command fails, the client MAY proceed without
authentication, Alternatively, the client MAY try another
authentication mechanism or present different credentials by
issuing another AUTH command.
Note: a server implementation MUST implement a configuration
in which it does NOT permit any plaintext password mechanisms,
unless either the STARTTLS [SMTP-TLS] command has been
negotiated or some other mechanism that protects the session
from password snooping has been provided. Server sites SHOULD
NOT use any configuration which permits a plaintext password
mechanism without such a protection mechanism against password
snooping.
To ensure interoperability, client and server implementations
of this extension MUST implement the [PLAIN] SASL mechanism
running over TLS [TLS] [SMTP-TLS]. See also section 15 for
additional requirements on implementations of [PLAIN] over
[TLS].
Note that many existing client and server implementations
implement CRAM-MD5 [CRAM-MD5] SASL mechanism. In order to
ensure interoperability with deployed software new
implementations MAY implement it, however implementations
should be aware that this SASL mechanism doesn't provide any
server authentication. Note that at the time of writing of
this document the SASL Working Group is working on several
replacement SASL mechanisms that provide server authentication
and other features.
When the AUTH command is used together with the [PIPELINING]
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extension, it MUST be the last command in a pipelined group of
commands. The only exception to this rule is when the AUTH
command contains an initial response for a SASL mechanism that
allows client to send data first and is known to complete in
one round-trip. Two examples of such SASL mechanisms are PLAIN
[PLAIN] and EXTERNAL [SASL].
4.1. Examples
Here is an example of a client attempting AUTH using the [PLAIN]
SASL mechanism under a TLS layer, and making use of the initial
client response:
S: 220-smtp.example.com ESMTP Server
C: EHLO client.example.com
S: 250-smtp.example.com Hello client.example.com
S: 250-AUTH GSSAPI DIGEST-MD5
S: 250-ENHANCEDSTATUSCODES
S: 250 STARTTLS
C: STARTTLS
S: 220 Ready to start TLS
... TLS negotiation proceeds, further commands
protected by TLS layer ...
C: EHLO client.example.com
S: 250-smtp.example.com Hello client.example.com
S: 250 AUTH GSSAPI DIGEST-MD5 PLAIN
C: AUTH PLAIN dGVzdAB0ZXN0ADEyMzQ=
S: 235 2.7.0 Authentication successful
Here is another client that is attempting AUTH PLAIN under a TLS
layer, this time without the initial response. Parts of the
negotiation before the TLS layer was established have been omitted:
... TLS negotiation proceeds, further commands
protected by TLS layer ...
C: EHLO client.example.com
S: 250-smtp.example.com Hello client.example.com
S: 250 AUTH GSSAPI DIGEST-MD5 PLAIN
C: AUTH PLAIN
(note: there is a single space following the 334
on the following line)
S: 334
C: dGVzdAB0ZXN0ADEyMzQ=
S: 235 2.7.0 Authentication successful
Here is an example using CRAM-MD5 [CRAM-MD5], a mechanism in which
the client does not begin the authentication exchange, and includes
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a server challenge:
S: 220-smtp.example.com ESMTP Server
C: EHLO client.example.com
S: 250-smtp.example.com Hello client.example.com
S: 250-AUTH DIGEST-MD5 CRAM-MD5
S: 250-ENHANCEDSTATUSCODES
S: 250 STARTTLS
C: AUTH CRAM-MD5
S: 334 PDQxOTI5NDIzNDEuMTI4Mjg0NzJAc291cmNlZm91ci5hbmRyZXcuY211LmVk
dT4=
C: cmpzMyBlYzNhNTlmZWQzOTVhYmExZWM2MzY3YzRmNGI0MWFjMA==
S: 235 2.7.0 Authentication successful
Here is an example of a client attempting AUTH EXTERNAL under TLS,
using the derived authorization ID (and thus a zero-length initial
client response).
S: 220-smtp.example.com ESMTP Server
C: EHLO client.example.com
S: 250-smtp.example.com Hello client.example.com
S: 250-AUTH GSSAPI DIGEST-MD5
S: 250-ENHANCEDSTATUSCODES
S: 250 STARTTLS
C: STARTTLS
S: 220 Ready to start TLS
... TLS negotiation proceeds, further commands
protected by TLS layer ...
C: EHLO client.example.com
S: 250-smtp.example.com Hello client.example.com
S: 250 AUTH EXTERNAL GSSAPI DIGEST-MD5 PLAIN
C: AUTH EXTERNAL =
S: 235 2.7.0 Authentication successful
5. The AUTH Parameter to the MAIL FROM command
AUTH=mailbox
Arguments:
A <mailbox> (see section 4.1.2 of [SMTP]) that is associated
with the identity which submitted the message to the delivery
system, or the two character sequence "<>" indicating such an
identity is unknown or insufficiently authenticated. To comply
with restrictions imposed on ESMTP parameters, the <mailbox> is
encoded inside an xtext. The syntax of an xtext is described in
Section 4 of [ESMTP-DSN].
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Note:
For the purposes of this discussion, "authenticated identity"
refers to the identity (if any) derived from the authorization
identity of previous AUTH command, while the terms "authorized
identity" and "supplied <mailbox>" refer to the sender identity
that is being associated with a particular message. Note that
one authenticated identity may be able to identify messages as
being sent by any number of authorized identities within a
single session. For example, this may be the case when an SMTP
server (one authenticated identity) is processing its queue
(many messages with distinct authorized identities).
Discussion:
The optional AUTH parameter to the MAIL FROM command allows
cooperating agents in a trusted environment to communicate the
authorization identity associated with individual messages.
If the server trusts the authenticated identity of the client to
assert that the message was originally submitted by the supplied
<mailbox>, then the server SHOULD supply the same <mailbox> in
an AUTH parameter when relaying the message to any other server
which supports the AUTH extension.
For this reason, servers that advertise support for this
extension MUST support the AUTH parameter to the MAIL FROM
command even when the client has not authenticated itself to the
server.
A MAIL FROM parameter of AUTH=<> indicates that the original
submitter of the message is not known. The server MUST NOT
treat the message as having been originally submitted by
authenticated identity which resulted from the AUTH command.
If the AUTH parameter to the MAIL FROM command is not supplied,
the client has authenticated, and the server believes the
message is an original submission, the server MAY generate a
<mailbox> from the user's authenticated identity for use in an
AUTH parameter when relaying the message to any server which
supports the AUTH extension. The generated <mailbox> is
implementation specific, but it MUST conform to the syntax of
[SMTP]. If the implementation cannot generate a valid
<mailbox>, it MUST transmit AUTH=<> when relaying this message.
If the server does not sufficiently trust the authenticated
identity of the client, or if the client is not authenticated,
then the server MUST behave as if the AUTH=<> parameter was
supplied. The server MAY, however, write the value of any
supplied AUTH parameter to a log file.
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If an AUTH=<> parameter was supplied, either explicitly or due
to the requirement in the previous paragraph, then the server
MUST supply the AUTH=<> parameter when relaying the message to
any server which it has authenticated to using the AUTH
extension.
A server MAY treat expansion of a mailing list as a new
submission, setting the AUTH parameter to the mailing list
address or mailing list administration address when relaying the
message to list subscribers.
Note that an implementation which is hard-coded to treat all
clients as being insufficiently trusted is compliant with this
specification. In that case, the implementation does nothing
more than parse and discard syntactically valid AUTH parameters
to the MAIL FROM command, and supply AUTH=<> parameters to any
servers which it authenticates to.
5.1. Examples
An example where the original identity of the sender is trusted and
known:
C: MAIL FROM:<e=mc2@example.com> AUTH=e+3Dmc2@example.com
S: 250 OK
One example where the identity of the sender is not trusted or is
otherwise being suppressed by the client:
C: MAIL FROM:<john+@example.org> AUTH=<>
S: 250 OK
6. Status Codes
The following error codes may be used to indicate various success or
failure conditions. Servers that return enhanced status codes
[ESMTP-CODES] SHOULD use the enhanced codes suggested here.
235 2.7.0 Authentication Succeeded
This response to the AUTH command indicates that the authentication
was successful.
432 4.7.12 A password transition is needed
This response to the AUTH command indicates that the user needs to
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transition to the selected authentication mechanism. This is
typically done by authenticating once using the [PLAIN]
authentication mechanism. The selected mechanism SHOULD then work
for authentications in subsequent sessions.
454 4.7.0 Temporary authentication failure
This response to the AUTH command indicates that the authentication
failed due to a temporary server failure. The client SHOULD NOT
prompt the user for another password in this case, and instead
notify the user of server failure.
534 5.7.9 Authentication mechanism is too weak
This response to the AUTH command indicates that the selected
authentication mechanism is weaker than server policy permits for
that user. The client SHOULD retry with a new authentication
mechanism.
535 5.7.8 Authentication credentials invalid
This response to the AUTH command indicates that the authentication
failed due to invalid or insufficient authentication credentials.
In this case, the client SHOULD ask the user to supply new
credentials (such as by presenting a password dialog box).
500 5.5.6 Authentication Exchange line is too long
This response to the AUTH command indicates that the authentication
failed due to the client sending a [BASE64] response which is longer
than the maximum buffer size available for the currently selected
SASL mechanism.
530 5.7.0 Authentication required
This response SHOULD be returned by any command other than AUTH,
EHLO, HELO, NOOP, RSET, or QUIT when server policy requires
authentication in order to perform the requested action and
authentication is not currently in force.
538 5.7.11 Encryption required for requested authentication
mechanism
This response to the AUTH command indicates that the selected
authentication mechanism may only be used when the underlying SMTP
connection is encrypted. Note that this response code is documented
here for historical purposes only. Modern implementations SHOULD
NOT advertise mechanisms that are not permitted due to lack of
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encryption, unless an encryption layer of sufficient strength is
currently being employed.
This document adds several new enhanced status code to the list
defined in [ENHANCED]:
The following 3 Enhanced Status Codes were defined above:
5.7.8 Authentication credentials invalid
5.7.9 Authentication mechanism is too weak
5.7.11 Encryption required for requested authentication mechanism
X.5.6 Authentication Exchange line is too long
This enhanced status code SHOULD be returned when the server fails
the AUTH command due to the client sending a [BASE64] response which
is longer than the maximum buffer size available for the currently
selected SASL mechanism. This is useful for both permanent and
persistent transient errors.
7. Additional requirements on servers
As described in Section 4.4 of [SMTP], an SMTP server that receives
a message for delivery or further processing MUST insert the
"Received:" header field at the beginning of the message content.
This document places additional requirements on the content of a
generated "Received:" header field. Upon successful authentication a
server SHOULD use the "ESMTPA" or the "ESMTPSA" [SMTP-TT] (when
appropriate) keyword in the "with" clause of the Received header
field.
8. Formal Syntax
The following syntax specification uses the Augmented Backus-Naur
Form notation as specified in [ABNF]. Non-terminals referenced but
not defined below are as defined by [ABNF] or [SASL]. The non-
terminal <mailbox> is defined in [SMTP].
Except as noted otherwise, all alphabetic characters are case-
insensitive. The use of upper or lower case characters to define
token strings is for editorial clarity only. Implementations MUST
accept these strings in a case-insensitive fashion.
hexchar = "+" HEXDIG HEXDIG
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xchar = %x21-2A / %x2C-3C / %x3E-7E
;; US-ASCII except for "+", "=", SP and CTL
xtext = *(xchar / hexchar)
;; non-US-ASCII is only allowed as hexchar
auth-command = "AUTH" SP sasl-mech [SP initial-response]
*(CRLF [base64]) [CRLF cancel-response]
CRLF
;; <sasl-mech> is defined in [SASL]
auth-param = "AUTH=" xtext
;; Parameter to the MAIL FROM command.
;; This non-terminal complies with
;; syntax defined by esmtp-param [SMTP].
;;
;; The decoded form of the xtext MUST be
;; either a <mailbox> or the two
;; characters "<>"
base64 = base64-terminal /
( 1*(4base64-char) [base64-terminal] )
base64-char = ALPHA / DIGIT / "+" / "/"
;; Case-sensitive
base64-terminal = (2base64-char "==") / (3base64-char "=")
continue-req = "334" SP [base64] CRLF
;; Intermediate response to the AUTH
;; command.
;; This non-terminal complies with
;; syntax defined by Reply-line [SMTP].
initial-response= base64 / "="
cancel-response = "*"
9. Security Considerations
Security issues are discussed throughout this memo.
If a client uses this extension to get an encrypted tunnel through
an insecure network to a cooperating server, it needs to be
configured to never send mail to that server when the connection is
not mutually authenticated and encrypted. Otherwise, an attacker
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could steal the client's mail by hijacking the [SMTP] connection and
either pretending the server does not support the Authentication
extension or causing all AUTH commands to fail.
Before the [SASL] negotiation has begun, any protocol interactions
are performed in the clear and may be modified by an active
attacker. For this reason, clients and servers MUST discard any
knowledge obtained prior to the start of the SASL negotiation upon
the establishment of a security layer.
This mechanism does not protect the TCP port, so an active attacker
may redirect a relay connection attempt (i.e. a connection between
two MTAs) to the submission port [SUBMIT]. The AUTH=<> parameter
prevents such an attack from causing a relayed message, in the
absence of other envelope authentication, from picking up the
authentication of the relay client.
A message submission client may require the user to authenticate
whenever a suitable [SASL] mechanism is advertised. Therefore, it
may not be desirable for a submission server [SUBMIT] to advertise a
SASL mechanism when use of that mechanism grants the clients no
benefits over anonymous submission.
Servers MAY implement a policy whereby the connection is dropped
after a number of failed authentication attempts. If they do so,
they SHOULD NOT drop the connection until at least 3 attempts to
authenticate have failed.
If an implementation supports SASL mechanisms that are vulnerable to
passive eavesdropping attacks (such as [PLAIN]), then the
implementation MUST support at least one configuration where these
SASL mechanisms are not advertised or used without the presence of
an external security layer such as [TLS].
This extension is not intended to replace or be used instead of end-
to-end message signature and encryption systems such as [S/MIME] or
[PGP]. This extension addresses a different problem than end-to-end
systems; it has the following key differences:
1. It is generally useful only within a trusted enclave.
2. It protects the entire envelope of a message, not just the
message's body.
3. It authenticates the message submission, not authorship of the
message content.
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4. When mutual authentication is used along with a security
layer, it can give the sender some assurance that the message
was successfully delivered to the next hop.
Additional security considerations are mentioned in the [SASL]
specification. Additional security considerations specific to a
particular SASL mechanism are described in the relevant
specification. Additional security considerations for [PLAIN] over
[TLS] are mentioned in Section 15 of this document.
10. IANA Considerations
This document requests that the IANA update the entry for the "smtp"
SASL protocol name to point at this document.
This document requests that the IANA updates registration of the
Authentication SMTP service extension as defined in Section 3 of
this document. This registry is currently located at
<http://www.iana.org/assignments/mail-parameters>.
11. Normative References
[ABNF] Crocker, D. and P. Overell, "Augmented BNF for Syntax
Specifications: ABNF", RFC 4234, October 2005.
[BASE64] Josefsson, S., "The Base16, Base32, and Base64 Data
Encodings", RFC 4648, October 2006.
[ESMTP-CODES]
Freed, N., "SMTP Service Extension for Returning Enhanced
Error Codes", RFC 2034, October 1996.
[ENHANCED] Vaudreuil, G., "Enhanced Mail System Status Codes", RFC
3463, January 2003.
[ESMTP-DSN] Moore, K., "Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) Service
Extension Delivery Status Notifications (DSNs)", RFC 3461,
January 2003.
[KEYWORDS] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
[SASL] Melnikov, A. and K. Zeilenga, "Simple Authentication and
Security Layer (SASL)", RFC 4422, June 2006.
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[SASLprep] Zeilega, K., "SASLprep: Stringprep profile for user names
and passwords", RFC 4013, February 2005.
[SMTP] Klensin, J., "Simple Mail Transfer Protocol", RFC 2821,
April 2001.
[SMTP-TLS] Hoffman, P. "SMTP Service Extension for Secure SMTP over
Transport Layer Security", RFC 3207, February 2002.
[StringPrep]
Hoffman, P., Blanchet, M., "Preparation of Internationalized
Strings ("stringprep")", RFC 3454, December 2002.
[SUBMIT] Gellens, R. and J. Klensin, "Message Submission for Mail",
RFC 4409, April 2006.
[SMTP-TT] Newman, C., "ESMTP and LMTP Transmission Types
Registration", RFC 3848, July 2004.
[PLAIN] Zeilenga, K. (Ed.), "The PLAIN Simple Authentication and
Security Layer (SASL) Mechanism", RFC 4616, August 2006.
[X509] Housley, R., Polk, W., Ford, W. and D. Solo, "Internet X.509
Public Key Infrastructure Certificate and Certificate
Revocation List (CRL) Profile", RFC 3280, April 2002.
12. Informative References
[PGP] Elkins, M., "MIME Security with Pretty Good Privacy (PGP)",
RFC 2015, October 1996.
[S/MIME] Ramsdell, B., "S/MIME Version 3 Message Specification", RFC
2633, June 1999.
[TLS] Dierks, T. and E. Rescorla, "The Transport Layer Security
(TLS) Protocol Version 1.1", RFC 4346, April 2006.
[PIPELINING]
Freed, N., "SMTP Service Extension for Command Pipelining",
RFC 2920, September 2000.
[CRAM-MD5] Klensin, J., Catoe, R. and P. Krumviede, IMAP/POP AUTHorize
Extension for Simple Challenge/Response", RFC 2195,
September 1997.
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SMTP Service Extension for Authentication April 2007
13. Editors' Addresses
Robert Siemborski
Google, Inc.
1600 Ampitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043, USA
+1 650 623 6925
robsiemb@google.com
Alexey Melnikov
Isode Limited
5 Castle Business Village, 36 Station Road,
Hampton, Middlesex, TW12 2BX, UK
Alexey.Melnikov@isode.com
14. Acknowledgments:
Editors would like to acknowledge the contributions of John Myers
and other contributors to RFC 2554, on which this document draws
from heavily.
Editors would also like to thank Ken Murchison, Mark Crispin, Chris
Newman, David Wilson, Dave Cridland, Frank Ellermann, Ned Freed,
John Klensin, Tony Finch, Abhijit Menon-Sen, Philip Guenther, Sam
Hartman, Russ Housley, Cullen Jennings and Lisa Dusseault for the
time they devoted to reviewing of this document and/or for the
comments received.
15. Additional requirements when using SASL PLAIN over TLS
This section is normative for SMTP implementations that support SASL
[PLAIN] over [TLS].
If an SMTP client is willing to use SASL PLAIN over TLS to
authenticate to the SMTP server, the client verifies the server
certificate according to the rules of [X509]. If the server has not
provided any certificate, or if the certificate verification fails,
the client MUST NOT attempt to authenticate using the SASL PLAIN
mechanism.
After a successful [TLS] negotiation, the client MUST check its
understanding of the server hostname against the server's identity
as presented in the server Certificate message, in order to prevent
man-in-the-middle attacks. If the match fails, the client MUST NOT
attempt to authenticate using the SASL PLAIN mechanism. Matching is
performed according to the following rules:
The client MUST use the server hostname it used to open the
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connection as the value to compare against the server name as
expressed in the server certificate. The client MUST NOT use
any form of the server hostname derived from an insecure remote
source (e.g., insecure DNS lookup). CNAME canonicalization is
not done.
If a subjectAltName extension of type dNSName is present in the
certificate, it SHOULD be used as the source of the server's
identity.
Matching is case-insensitive.
A "*" wildcard character MAY be used as the left-most name
component in the certificate. For example, *.example.com would
match a.example.com, foo.example.com, etc. but would not match
example.com.
If the certificate contains multiple names (e.g., more than one
dNSName field), then a match with any one of the fields is
considered acceptable.
16. Changes Since RFC 2554
1. Clarify that servers MUST support the use of the AUTH=mailbox
parameter to MAIL FROM, even when the client is not
authenticated.
2. Clarify the initial-client-send requirements, and give
additional examples.
3. Update references to newer versions of various specifications.
4. Require SASL PLAIN (over TLS) as mandatory-to-implement.
5. Clarify that the mechanism list can change.
6. Deprecate the use of the 538 response code.
7. Add the use of the SASLprep profile for preparing
authorization identities.
8. Substantial cleanup of response codes and indicate suggested
enhanced response codes. Also indicate what response codes
should result in a client prompting the user for new
credentials.
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9. Updated ABNF section to use RFC 4234.
10. Clarified interaction with SMTP PIPELINING extension.
11. Added a reference to RFC 3848.
12. Added a new Enhanced Status Code for "authentication line too
long" case.
13. General other editorial clarifications.
17. Intellectual Property
The IETF takes no position regarding the validity or scope of any
Intellectual Property Rights or other rights that might be claimed
to pertain to the implementation or use of the technology described
in this document or the extent to which any license under such
rights might or might not be available; nor does it represent that
it has made any independent effort to identify any such rights.
Information on the procedures with respect to rights in RFC
documents can be found in BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Copies of IPR disclosures made to the IETF Secretariat and any
assurances of licenses to be made available, or the result of an
attempt made to obtain a general license or permission for the use
of such proprietary rights by implementers or users of this
specification can be obtained from the IETF on-line IPR repository
at http://www.ietf.org/ipr.
The IETF invites any interested party to bring to its attention any
copyrights, patents or patent applications, or other proprietary
rights that may cover technology that may be required to implement
this standard. Please address the information to the IETF at ietf-
ipr@ietf.org.
18. Full Copyright Statement
Copyright (C) The IETF Trust (2007).
This document is subject to the rights, licenses and restrictions
contained in BCP 78, and except as set forth therein, the authors
retain all their rights.
This document and the information contained herein are provided on
an "AS IS" basis and THE CONTRIBUTOR, THE ORGANIZATION HE/SHE
REPRESENTS OR IS SPONSORED BY (IF ANY), THE INTERNET SOCIETY, THE
IETF TRUST AND THE INTERNET ENGINEERING TASK FORCE DISCLAIM ALL
WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY
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SMTP Service Extension for Authentication April 2007
WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE INFORMATION HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE
ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS
FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
Acknowledgement
Funding for the RFC Editor function is currently provided by the
Internet Society.
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. How to Read This Document . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3. The Authentication Service Extension . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
4. The AUTH Command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
4.1. Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
5. The AUTH Parameter to the MAIL FROM command . . . . . . . . . . . 9
5.1. Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
6. Status Codes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
7. Additional requirements on servers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
8. Formal Syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
9. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
10. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
11. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
12. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
13. Editors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
14. Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
15. Additional requirements when using SASL PLAIN over TLS . . . . . 18
16. Changes Since RFC 2554 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
17. Intellectual Property . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
18. Full Copyright Statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
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