DKIM Working Group E. Allman
Internet-Draft Sendmail, Inc.
Intended status: Standards Track M. Delany
Expires: December 19, 2007 Yahoo! Inc.
J. Fenton
Cisco Systems, Inc.
June 17, 2007
DKIM Sender Signing Practices
draft-ietf-dkim-ssp-00
Status of this Memo
By submitting this Internet-Draft, each author represents that any
applicable patent or other IPR claims of which he or she is aware
have been or will be disclosed, and any of which he or she becomes
aware will be disclosed, in accordance with Section 6 of BCP 79.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that
other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-
Drafts.
Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at
http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt.
The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at
http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html.
This Internet-Draft will expire on December 19, 2007.
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 Transport Agents (MTAs) or Mail
User Agents (MUAs). The primary DKIM protocol is described in
Allman, et al. Expires December 19, 2007 [Page 1]
Internet-Draft DKIM SSP June 2007
[RFC4871].
This document describes the records that senders may use to advertise
how they sign their outgoing mail, and how verifiers should access
and interpret those results.
Requirements Language
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 [RFC2119].
(Unresolved Issues/To Be Done)
Security Considerations needs further work.
Allman, et al. Expires December 19, 2007 [Page 2]
Internet-Draft DKIM SSP June 2007
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2. Language and Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.1. Terms Imported from DKIM Signatures Specification . . . . 5
2.2. Valid Signature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.3. Originator Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.4. Alleged Signer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.5. Alleged Originator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.6. Sender Signing Practices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.7. Originator Signature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.8. Suspicious . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.9. Third-Party Signature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.10. Verifier Acceptable Third-Party Signature . . . . . . . . 7
3. Operation Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
4. Detailed Description . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
4.1. DNS Representation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
4.2. Publication of SSP Records . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
4.3. Record Syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
4.4. Sender Signing Practices Check Procedure . . . . . . . . . 11
5. Third-Party Signatures and Mailing Lists . . . . . . . . . . . 12
5.1. Mailing List Manager Actions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
5.2. Signer Actions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
6. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
7. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
7.1. Fraudulent Sender Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
7.2. DNS Attacks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
8. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
8.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
8.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Appendix A. Change Log . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
A.1. Changes since -allman-ssp-02 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
A.2. Changes since -allman-ssp-01 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
A.3. Changes since -allman-ssp-00 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Intellectual Property and Copyright Statements . . . . . . . . . . 19
Allman, et al. Expires December 19, 2007 [Page 3]
Internet-Draft DKIM SSP June 2007
1. Introduction
DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) defines a mechanism by which email
messages can be cryptographically signed, permitting a signing domain
to claim responsibility for the introduction of a message into the
mail stream. Message recipients can verify the signature by querying
the signer's domain directly to retrieve the appropriate public key,
and thereby confirm that the message was attested to by a party in
possession of the private key for the signing domain.
However, the legacy of the Internet is such that not all messages
will be signed, and the absence of a signature on a message is not an
a priori indication of forgery. In fact, during early phases of
deployment it must be expected that most messages will remain
unsigned. However, some domains may choose to sign all of their
outgoing mail, for example, to protect their brand name. It is
highly desirable for such domains to be able to advertise that fact
to verifiers, and that messages claiming to be from them that do not
have a valid signature are likely to be forgeries. This is the topic
for sender signing practices.
In the absence of a valid DKIM signature on behalf of the "From"
address [RFC2822], the verifier of a message MUST determine whether
messages from that sender are expected to be signed, and what
signatures are acceptable. In particular, whether a domain signs all
outbound email must be communicated to the verifier. Without such a
mechanism, the benefit of message signing techniques such as DKIM is
limited since unsigned messages will always need to be considered to
be potentially legitimate. This determination is referred to as a
Sender Signing Practices check.
Conceivably, such expressions might be imagined to be extended in the
future to include information about what hashing algorithms a domain
uses, what kind of messages might be sent (e.g., bulk vs. personal
vs. transactional), etc. Such concerns are out of scope of this
standard, because they can be expressed in the key record
("Selector") with which the signature is verified. In contrast, this
specification focuses on information which is relevant in the absence
of a valid signature. Expressions of signing practice which require
outside auditing are similarly out of scope for this specification
because they fall under the purview of reputation and accreditation.
The detailed requirements for Sender Signing Practices are given in
[I-D.ietf-dkim-ssp-requirements], which the protocol described in
this document attempts to satisfy. This document refers extensively
to [RFC4871], which should be read as a prerequisite to this
document.
Allman, et al. Expires December 19, 2007 [Page 4]
Internet-Draft DKIM SSP June 2007
2. Language and Terminology
2.1. Terms Imported from DKIM Signatures Specification
Some terminology used herein is derived directly from [RFC4871].
Briefly,
o A "Signer" is the agent that signs a message. In many cases it
will correspond closely with the original author of the message or
an agent working on the author's behalf.
o A "Verifier" is the agent that verifies a message by checking the
actual signature against the message itself and the public key
published by the alleged signer. The Verifier also looks up the
Sender Signing Practices published by the domain of the Originator
Address if the message is not correctly signed by the Alleged
Originator.
o A "Selector" specifies which of the keys published by a signing
domain should be queried. It is essentially a way of subdividing
the address space to allow a single sending domain to publish
multiple keys.
2.2. Valid Signature
A "Valid Signature" is any signature on a message which correctly
verifies using the procedure described in section 6.1 of [RFC4871].
2.3. Originator Address
The "Originator Address" is the email address in the From header
field of a message [RFC2822], or if and only if the From header field
contains multiple addresses, the first address in the From header
field.
NON-NORMATIVE RATIONALE: The alternative option when there are
multiple addresses in the From header field is to use the value of
the Sender header field. This would be closer to the semantics
indicated in [RFC2822] than using the first address in the From
header field. However, the large number of deployed Mail User
Agents that do not display the Sender header field value argues
against that. Multiple addresses in the From header field are
rare in real life.
Allman, et al. Expires December 19, 2007 [Page 5]
Internet-Draft DKIM SSP June 2007
2.4. Alleged Signer
An "Alleged Signer" is the identity of the signer claimed in a DKIM-
Signature header field in a message received by a Verifier; it is
"alleged" because it has not yet been verified.
2.5. Alleged Originator
An "Alleged Originator" is the Originator Address of a message
received by a Verifier; it is "alleged" because it has not yet been
verified.
2.6. Sender Signing Practices
"Sender Signing Practices" (or just "practices") consist of a
machine-readable record published by the domain of the Alleged
Originator which includes information about whether or not that
entity signs all of their email, and whether signatures from third
parties are sanctioned by the Alleged Originator.
2.7. Originator Signature
An "Originator Signature" is any Valid Signature where the signing
address (listed in the "i=" tag if present, otherwise its default
value, consisting of the null address, representing an unknown user,
followed by "@", followed by the value of the "d=" tag) matches the
address in the "From" header field. If the signing address does not
include a local-part, then only the domains must match; otherwise,
the two addresses must be identical.
2.8. Suspicious
Messages that do not contain a valid Originator Signature and which
are inconsistent with a Sender Signing Practices check (e.g., are
received without a Valid Signature and the sender's signing practices
indicate all messages from the entity are signed) are referred to as
"Suspicious". The handling of such messages is at the discretion of
the Verifier or final recipient. "Suspicious" applies only to the
DKIM evaluation of the message; a Verifier may decide the message
should be accepted on the basis of other information beyond the scope
of this document. Conversely, messages deemed non-Suspicious may be
rejected for other reasons.
2.9. Third-Party Signature
A "Third-Party Signature" is a Valid Signature which is not an
Originator Signature.
Allman, et al. Expires December 19, 2007 [Page 6]
Internet-Draft DKIM SSP June 2007
2.10. Verifier Acceptable Third-Party Signature
A Verifier Acceptable Third-Party Signature is a Third-Party
Signature that the Verifier is willing to accept as meaningful for
the message under consideration. The Verifier may use any criteria
it deems appropriate for making this determination.
3. Operation Overview
Sender Signing Practices checks MUST be based on the Originator
Address. If the message contains a valid Originator Signature, no
Sender Signing Practices check need be performed: the Verifier
SHOULD NOT look up the Sender Signing Practices and the message
SHOULD be considered non-Suspicious.
Verifiers checking messages that do not have at least one valid
Originator Signature MUST perform a Sender Signing Practices check on
the domain specified by the Originator Address as described in
Section 4.4.
The result of a Sender Signing Practices check is one of four
possible practices:
1. Some messages from this domain are not signed; the message SHOULD
be presumed to be legitimate in the absence of a valid signature.
This is the default.
2. All messages from this domain are signed; all messages from this
domain should have a Valid Signature. Signatures on behalf of a
third party (e.g., a mailing list) handling the message MAY be
accepted at the discretion of the verifier.
NON-NORMATIVE RATIONALE: Third-party signatures, since they
can potentially represent any domain, are considered more
likely to be abused by attackers seeking to spoof a specific
address. It may therefore be desirable for verifiers to apply
other criteria outside the scope of this specification in
deciding to accept a given third-party signature. For
example, a list of known mailing list domains used by
addresses served by the verifier might be specifically
considered acceptable third-party signers.
3. All valid messages from this domain are signed, and SHOULD have a
Valid Signature from this domain. Third-Party Signatures SHOULD
NOT be accepted. This practice would typically be used by
domains which send only transactional email (i.e., do not use
mailing lists and such that are likely to break signatures) and
Allman, et al. Expires December 19, 2007 [Page 7]
Internet-Draft DKIM SSP June 2007
which wish to emphasize security over deliverability of their
messages.
4. The domain does not exist; the message SHOULD be presumed not to
be legitimate.
If a message is encountered by a Verifier without a valid Originator
Signature, the results MUST be interpreted as follows:
If the result of the check is practice (1) described above, the
message MUST be considered non-Suspicious.
If the result of the check is practice (2), and any verifiable
signature is present from some signer other than the Originator
Address in the message, the message SHOULD be considered non-
Suspicious.
If the result of the check is practice (3) or (4), the message
MUST be considered Suspicious.
If the Sender Signing Practices record for the domain does not exist
but the domain does exist, Verifier systems MUST assume that some
messages from this entity are not signed and the message SHOULD NOT
be considered to be Suspicious.
4. Detailed Description
4.1. DNS Representation
Sender Signing Practices records are published using the DNS TXT
resource record type.
NON-NORMATIVE DISCUSSION: There has been considerable discussion
on the DKIM WG mailing list regarding the relative advantages of
TXT and a new resource record (RR) type. The existence of DNS
server and resolver implementations which are unable to support
resource record types other than a specific well-known set is
cited as a requirement for support of TXT records regardless of
whether a new RR is defined. However, without a "flag day" on
which SSP TXT record support is to be withdrawn, such support is
likely to continue indefinitely. As a result, this specification
defines no new RR type for SSP.
Another alternative proposed by P. Hallam-Baker is the publication
of both a TXT record and, when implementations permit, a new RR,
referred to as XPTR, which gives the location from which SSP and
other policy information relating to a give domain can be
Allman, et al. Expires December 19, 2007 [Page 8]
Internet-Draft DKIM SSP June 2007
retrieved. This has the advantage of supporting a variety of
policies in a scalable manner, with better handling of wildcards
and centralized publication of policy records, with caching
advantages. However, the above implementation issues also apply
to XPTR, and an additional lookup is required to retrieve SSP via
the XPTR method. At the time of publication of this draft,
consensus on this proposal was unclear.
The RDATA for SSP resource records is textual in format, with
specific syntax and semantics relating to their role in describing
sender signing practices. The "Tag=Value List" syntax described in
section 3.2 of [RFC4871] is used. Records not in compliance with
that syntax or the syntax of individual tags described in Section 4.3
MUST be ignored (considered equivalent to a NODATA result) for
purposes of message disposition, although they MAY cause the logging
of warning messages via an appropriate system logging mechanism.
SSP records for a domain are published at a location in the domain's
DNS hierarchy prefixed by _ssp._domainkey; e.g., the SSP record for
example.com would be a TXT record whcih is published at
_ssp._domainkey.example.com.
4.2. Publication of SSP Records
Sender Signing Policy is intended to apply to all mail allegedly sent
from a given Originating Domain, and to the greatest extent possible,
to all subdomains of that domain. There are several cases that need
to be considered in that regard:
o The domain itself
o Subdomains which may or may not be used for email
o Hostnames which may or may not be used for email
o Other named resource records in the domain
o Multi-level examples of the above, e.g., a.b.example.com
o Non-existent cases, i.e., a subdomain or hostname that does not
actually exist within the domain
In all of these cases, the records may be published either in
separate DNS zones or as records within a parent zone.
Normally, a domain expressing Sender Signing Practices will want to
do so for both itself and its all of its "descendents" (child
domains, and hosts, at all lower levels). Domains wishing to do so
Allman, et al. Expires December 19, 2007 [Page 9]
Internet-Draft DKIM SSP June 2007
MUST publish SSP records as follows:
Publish an SSP record for the domain itself
Publish an SSP record for any existing subdomain
Publish an SSP record for any multilevel name within the
subdomain. For example, it is necessary to publish a record for
a.b.example.com even if the b.example.com subdomain does not exist
in the sense of being explicitly delegated.
Note that since the lookup algorithm described below references the
immediate parent of the alleged originating domain, it is not
necessary to publish SSP records for every single-level label within
the domain. This has been done to relieve domain administrators of
the burden of publishing an SSP record for every other record in the
zone, which would be otherwise required.
Wildcards within a zone, including but not limited to wildcard MX
records, pose a particular problem. While referencing the immediate
parent domain allows the discovery of an SSP record corresponding to
an unintended immediate-child subdomain, wildcard records apply at
multiple levels. For example, if there is a wildcard MX record for
example.com, the domain foo.bar.example.com can receive mail through
the named mail exchanger. Conversely, the existence of the record
makes it impossible to tell whether foo.bar.example.com is a
legitimate name since a query for that name will not return an
NXDOMAIN error. For that reason, SSP coverage for subdomains of
domains containing a wildcard record is incomplete.
4.3. Record Syntax
Signing practices records follow the tag-value syntax described in
section 3.2 of [RFC4871]. Tags used in SSP records are as follows.
Unrecognized tags and tags with illegal values MUST be ignored. In
the ABNF below, the FWS token is inherited from [RFC2822] with the
exclusion of obs-FWS. The ALPHA and DIGIT tokens are imported from
[RFC4234].
dkim= Outbound signing practices for the entity (plain-text;
OPTIONAL, default is "unknown"). Possible values are as follows:
unknown The entity may sign some or all email.
all All mail from the entity is signed; unsigned email MUST be
considered Suspicious. The entity may send messages through
agents that may modify and re-sign messages, so email signed
with a Verifier Acceptable Third-Party Signature SHOULD be
Allman, et al. Expires December 19, 2007 [Page 10]
Internet-Draft DKIM SSP June 2007
considered non-Suspicious.
strict All mail from the entity is signed; messages lacking a
valid Originator Signature MUST be considered Suspicious. The
entity does not expect to send messages through agents that may
modify and re-sign messages.
NON-NORMATIVE RATIONALE: Strict practices may be used by
entities which send only transactional email to individual
addresses and which are willing to accept the consequence of
having some mail which is re-signed appear suspicious in
return for additional control over their addresses. Strict
practices may also be used by entities which do not send
(and therefore do not sign) any email.
ABNF:
ssp-dkim-tag = "dkim" [FWS] "=" [FWS] "unknown" / "all" / "strict"
t= Flags, represented as a colon-separated list of names (plain-text;
OPTIONAL, default is that no flags are set). Flag values are:
y The entity is testing signing practices, and the Verifier
SHOULD NOT consider a message suspicious based on the record.
s The signing practices apply only to the named domain, and not
to subdomains.
ABNF:
ssp-t-tag = %x75 [FWS] "=" [FWS] ssp-t-tag-flag
0*( [FWS] ":" [FWS] ssp-t-tag-flag )
ssp-t-tag-flag = "y" / "s" / hyphenated-word ; for future extension
hyphenated-word = ALPHA [ *(ALPHA / DIGIT / "-") (ALPHA / DIGIT) ]
Unrecognized flags MUST be ignored.
4.4. Sender Signing Practices Check Procedure
The Sender Signing Practices check SHOULD be performed after DKIM
signature(s), including any where the Alleged Signer is the Alleged
Originator, have been verified. Verifiers MUST produce a result that
is semantically equivalent to applying the following steps in the
order listed. In practice, several of these steps can be performed
in parallel in order to improve performance.
1. If a valid Originator Signature exists, the message is non-
Suspicious, and the algorithm terminates.
Allman, et al. Expires December 19, 2007 [Page 11]
Internet-Draft DKIM SSP June 2007
2. The Verifier MUST query DNS for a TXT record corresponding to the
domain part of the Originator Address prefixed by
"_ssp._domainkey.". If the result of this query is a NOERROR
response with one or more answer which is a syntactically-valid
SSP response, proceed to step 6.
3. The Verifier MUST query DNS for a TXT record corresponding to the
domain part of the Originator Address (with no prefix). This
query is made only to check the existence of the domain name and
MAY be done in parallel with the query made in step 2. If the
result of this query is an NXDOMAIN error, the message is
Supsicious and the algorithm terminates.
4. If the immediate parent of the domain part of the domain part of
the Originator Address is a top-level domain, then the message is
non-Suspicious (because no SSP record was found) and the
algorithm terminates. The verifier MAY also compare the parent
domain against a locally-maintained list of known address
suffixes (e.g., .co.uk) and terminate the algorithm with a non-
Suspicious result if the parent domain matches an entry on the
list.
5. The Verifier MUST query DNS for a TXT record forthe immediate
parent domain, prefixed with "_ssp._domainkey." If the result of
this query is a NOERROR response which does not contain one or
more answers which is a syntactically-valid SSP response, or the
"t" tag exists and any of the flags is "s" (indicating it should
not apply to a subdomain), the message is non-Suspicious and the
algorithm terminates.
6. If the SSP "t" tag exists and any of the flags is "y" (indicating
testing), the message is non-Suspicious and the algorithm
terminates.
7. If the value of the SSP "dkim" tag is "unknown", the message is
non-Suspicious and the algorithm terminates.
8. If the value of the SSP "dkim" tag is "all", and one or more
Valid Signatures are present on the message, the message is non-
Suspicious and the algorithm terminates.
9. The message is Suspicious and the algorithm terminates.
5. Third-Party Signatures and Mailing Lists
There are several forms of mailing lists, which interact with signing
in different ways.
Allman, et al. Expires December 19, 2007 [Page 12]
Internet-Draft DKIM SSP June 2007
o "Verbatim" mailing lists send messages without modification
whatsoever. They are often implemented as MTA-based aliases.
Since they do not modify the message, signatures are unaffected
and will continue to verify. It is not necessary for the
forwarder to re-sign the message; however, some may choose to do
so in order to certify that the message was sent through the list.
o "Digesting" mailing lists collect together one or more postings
and then retransmit them, often on a nightly basis, to the
subscription list. These are essentially entirely new messages
which must be independently authored (that is, they will have a
"From" header field referring to the list, not the submitters) and
signed by the Mailing List Manager itself, if they are signed at
all.
o "Resending" mailing lists receive a message, modify it (often to
add "unsubscribe" information or advertising), and immediately
resend that message to the subscription list. They are
problematic because they usually do not change the "From" header
field of the message, but they do invalidate the signature in the
process of modifying the message.
The first two cases act in obvious ways and do not require further
discussion. The remainder of this session applies only to the third
case.
5.1. Mailing List Manager Actions
Mailing List Managers should make every effort to ensure that
messages that they relay and which have Valid Signatures upon receipt
also have Valid Signatures upon retransmission. In particular,
Mailing List Managers that modify the message in ways that break
existing signatures SHOULD:
o Verify any existing DKIM Signatures. A DKIM-aware Mailing List
Manager MUST NOT re-sign an improperly signed message in such a
way that would imply that the existing signature is acceptable.
o Apply regular anti-spam policies. A Mailing List Manager SHOULD
apply message content security policy just as they would messages
destined for an individual user's mailbox. In fact, a Mailing
List Manager might apply a higher standard to messages destined to
a mailing list than would normally be applied to individual
messages.
NON-NORMATIVE RATIONALE: Since reputation will accrue to
signers, Mailing List Managers should verify the source and
content of messages before they are willing to sign lest their
Allman, et al. Expires December 19, 2007 [Page 13]
Internet-Draft DKIM SSP June 2007
reputation be sullied by nefarious parties.
o Add a Sender header field using a valid address pointing back to
the Mailing List Administrator or an appropriate agent (such as an
"owner-" or a "-request" address).
o Sign the resulting message with a signature that is valid for the
Sender header field address. The Mailing List Manager SHOULD NOT
sign messages for which they are unwilling to accept
responsibility.
Mailing List Managers MAY:
o Reject messages with signatures that do not verify or are
otherwise Suspicious.
5.2. Signer Actions
All Signers SHOULD:
o Include any existing Sender header field in the signed header
field list, if the Sender header field exists.
Signers wishing to avoid the use of Third-Party Signatures SHOULD do
everything listed above, and also:
o Include the Sender header field name in the header field list
("h=" tag) under all circumstances, even if the Sender header
field does not exist in the header block. This prevents another
entity from adding a Sender header field.
o Publish Sender Signing Practices that does not sanction the use of
Third-Party Signatures
6. IANA Considerations
IANA is requested to create a "DKIM selector name" registry and to
reserve the selector name "_ssp" to avoid confusion between DKIM key
records and SSP records.
7. Security Considerations
Security considerations in the Sender Signing Practices are mostly
related to attempts on the part of malicious senders to represent
themselves as other senders, often in an attempt to defraud either
the recipient or the Alleged Originator.
Allman, et al. Expires December 19, 2007 [Page 14]
Internet-Draft DKIM SSP June 2007
Additional security considerations regarding Sender Signing Practices
may be found in the DKIM threat analysis [RFC4686].
7.1. Fraudulent Sender Address
[[Assuming 3rd party signature is based on Sender header field]] If
the Sender Signing Practices sanction third-party signing, an
attacker can create a message with a From header field of an
arbitrary sender and a legitimately signed Sender header field
7.2. DNS Attacks
An attacker might attack the DNS infrastructure in an attempt to
impersonate SSP records. However, such an attacker is more likely to
attack at a higher level, e.g., redirecting A or MX record lookups in
order to capture traffic that was legitimately intended for the
target domain. Domains concerned about this should use DNSSEC
[RFC4033].
Because SSP operates within the framework of the legacy e-mail
system, the default result in the absence of an SSP record is that
the domain does notsign all of its messages. Therefore, a DNS attack
which is successful in suppressing the SSP response to the verifier
is sufficient to cause the verifier to see unsigned messages as non-
suspicious, even when that is not intended by the alleged originating
domain.
8. References
8.1. Normative References
[RFC1035] Mockapetris, P., "Domain names - implementation and
specification", STD 13, RFC 1035, November 1987.
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
[RFC2822] Resnick, P., "Internet Message Format", RFC 2822,
April 2001.
[RFC4234] Crocker, D., Ed. and P. Overell, "Augmented BNF for Syntax
Specifications: ABNF", RFC 4234, October 2005.
[RFC4871] Allman, E., Callas, J., Delany, M., Libbey, M., Fenton,
J., and M. Thomas, "DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM)
Signatures", RFC 4871, May 2007.
Allman, et al. Expires December 19, 2007 [Page 15]
Internet-Draft DKIM SSP June 2007
8.2. Informative References
[I-D.ietf-dkim-ssp-requirements]
Thomas, M., "Requirements for a DKIM Signing Practices
Protocol", draft-ietf-dkim-ssp-requirements-04 (work in
progress), April 2007.
[RFC4033] Arends, R., Austein, R., Larson, M., Massey, D., and S.
Rose, "DNS Security Introduction and Requirements",
RFC 4033, March 2005.
[RFC4686] Fenton, J., "Analysis of Threats Motivating DomainKeys
Identified Mail (DKIM)", RFC 4686, September 2006.
Appendix A. Change Log
A.1. Changes since -allman-ssp-02
o Removed user-granularity SSP and u= tag.
o Replaced DKIMP resource record with a TXT record.
o Changed name of the primary tag from "p" to "dkim".
o Replaced lookup algorithm with one which traverses upward at most
one level.
o Added description of records which must be published, and effect
of wildcard records within the domain, on SSP.
A.2. Changes since -allman-ssp-01
o Changed term "Sender Signing Policy" to "Sender Signing
Practices".
o Changed query methodology to use a separate DNS resource record
type, DKIMP.
o Changed tag values from SPF-like symbols to words.
o User level policies now default to that of the domain if not
specified.
o Removed the "Compliance" section since we're still not clear on
what goes here.
Allman, et al. Expires December 19, 2007 [Page 16]
Internet-Draft DKIM SSP June 2007
o Changed the "parent domain" policy to only search up one level
(assumes that subdomains will publish SSP records if appropriate).
o Added detailed description of SSP check procedure.
A.3. Changes since -allman-ssp-00
From a "diff" perspective, the changes are extensive. Semantically,
the changes are:
o Added section on "Third-Party Signatures and Mailing Lists"
o Added "Compliance" (transferred from -base document). I'm not
clear on what needs to be done here.
o Extensive restructuring.
Authors' Addresses
Eric Allman
Sendmail, Inc.
6425 Christie Ave, Suite 400
Emeryville, CA 94608
USA
Phone: +1 510 594 5501
Email: eric+dkim@sendmail.org
URI:
Mark Delany
Yahoo! Inc.
701 First Avenue
Sunnyvale, CA 94089
USA
Phone: +1 408 349 6831
Email: markd+dkim@yahoo-inc.com
URI:
Allman, et al. Expires December 19, 2007 [Page 17]
Internet-Draft DKIM SSP June 2007
Jim Fenton
Cisco Systems, Inc.
MS SJ-9/2
170 W. Tasman Drive
San Jose, CA 95134-1706
USA
Phone: +1 408 526 5914
Email: fenton@cisco.com
URI:
Allman, et al. Expires December 19, 2007 [Page 18]
Internet-Draft DKIM SSP June 2007
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 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.
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.
Acknowledgment
Funding for the RFC Editor function is provided by the IETF
Administrative Support Activity (IASA).
Allman, et al. Expires December 19, 2007 [Page 19]