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INTERNET DRAFT M. S. Kucherawy
Title: draft-kucherawy-sender-auth-header-02 Sendmail, Inc.
Expires: November 2005 May 2005
Message Header for Indicating Sender Authentication Status
Status of this Memo
By submitting this Internet-Draft, I certify that any applicable
patent or other IPR claims of which I am aware have been disclosed,
or will be disclosed, and any of which I become aware will be
disclosed, in accordance with RFC 3668.
This document may not be modified, and derivative works of it may not
be created, except to publish it as an RFC and to translate it into
languages other than English.
This document is an Internet-Draft and is subject to all provisions
of Section 10 of RFC2026.
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Abstract
This memo defines a new message header for use with [MAIL] messages
to indicate the results of sender authentication efforts to mail user
agents (MUAs) in order to equip them to relay that information in a
convenient way to users.
Table of Contents
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1. Introduction
This memo defines a new message header for [MAIL] messages which
presents the results of a sender authentication effort in a machine-
readable format. The intent is to create a place to collect such
data when sender authentication mechanisms are in use so that an MUA
can provide a recommendation to the user as to the trustworthiness of
the message's origin and content.
This memo defines both the format of this new header, and discusses
the implications of its presence or absence.
At the time of publication of this draft, only [AUTH] is a published
sender authentication standard. However, several more are in the
Internet Draft stage. As various methods emerge, it is necessary to
prepare their appearance and encourage convergence in the area of
interfacing these filters to MUAs.
1.1. Purposes
The header defined in this memo is expected to serve several pur-
poses:
(1) Convey to MUAs from filters and MTAs the results of various sender
authentication checks being applied;
(2) Provide a common location for the presentation of this data;
(3) Create an extensible framework for specifying new authentication
methods as such emerge.
(4) Convey the results of sender authentication tests to later filter-
ing agents within the same "trust domain", as such agents might
apply more or less stringent checks based on sender authentication
results.
1.2. Requirements
This memo establishes no new requirements on existing protocols or
servers, as there is currently not a standard place for the described
data to be collected or presented.
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1.3. Terminology
This document occasionally uses terms that appear in capital letters.
When the terms "MUST", "SHOULD", "RECOMMENDED", "MUST NOT", "SHOULD
NOT", and "MAY" appear capitalized, they are being used to indicate
particular requirements of this specification. A discussion of the
meanings of these terms appears in RFC2119.
Generally it is assumed that the work of applying sender authentica-
tion schemes takes place at a border MTA, that is, an MTA which acts
as a gateway between the general Internet and the users within an
organizational boundary. This specification is written with that
assumption in mind. However, there are some sites at which the
entire mail infrastructure consists of a single host. In such cases,
such terms as "border MTA" and "delivery MTA" may well apply to the
same machine or even the very same agent.
2. Definition and Format of the Header
The new header being defined here is called "Authentication-Results".
It qualifies in [MAIL] terms as a Structured Header Field, and thus
all of the related definitions in that document apply.
The decommented value of the header consists of a hostname, some
whitespace, a "property=value" statement indicating which property
was selected to determine who sent the message and what value was
extracted from that property, followed by zero or more authentication
method names and a result associated with each, returned by the code
that implements the method.
As it is currently a matter of some debate, the header MAY appear
more than once in a single message, or more than one result MAY be
represented in a single header, or a combination of these MAY be
applied.
Formally, the header is specified as follows:
header = "Authentication-Results" CFWS ":" CFWS hostname CFWS
headerspec *(CFWS ";" CFWS method CFWS "=" CFWS result)
CFWS
hostname = domain
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; as defined in section 3.4.1 of [MAIL]
method = token
; a method indicates which method's result is
; is represented by "value", and is one of the methods
; explicitly defined as valid in this document
; or is an extension method as defined below
result = "pass" / "fail" / "softfail" / "neutral" /
"temperror" / "permerror"
; an indication of the results of the attempt to
; authenticate the sender
token = ; as defined in Appendix A of [MIME]
CFWS = ; as defined in section 3.2.3 of [MAIL]
headerspec = ptype CWFS "." CWFS property CWFS "=" CFWS value
; an indication of which property of the message
; was evaluated by the authentication scheme being
; applied to yield the reported result
ptype = "smtp" / "header"
; indicates whether the property being evaluated was
; a parameter to an SMTP command or was a value taken
; from a message header
property = token
; if "ptype" is "smtp", this indicates which SMTP command
; provided the value which was evaluated by the
; authentication scheme being applied, or if "ptype" is
; "header", this indicates from which header the value
; being evaluated was extracted
value = token / mailbox
; the value extracted from the message property defined
; by the "ptype.property" construction; if the value is
; intended ; to identify a mailbox, then it is a "mailbox"
; as defined in section 3.4 of [MAIL]
The "ptype" and "property" are case-insensitive.
If the parsed "ptype.property" construction clearly identifies a
mailbox (in particular, smtp.mail, smtp.rcpt, header.from,
header.sender), then the "value" must be a "mailbox". Other proper-
ties (e.g. smtp.helo) may be evaluated, but the property MUST still
be expressed as a "token" for simplified parsing.
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The six possible values of the "result" are:
pass
sending domain publishes an authentication policy of some kind,
and the message passed the authentication tests
fail
sending domain publishes an authentication policy of some kind,
and the message failed the authentication tests
softfail
sending domain publishes an authentication policy which doesn't
require authentication of all messages from that domain, and the
message failed the authentication tests
neutral
sending domain does not publish any sender authentication policy
temperror
a temporary (recoverable) error occurred attempting to authenti-
cate the sender; either the process couldn't be completed
locally because of some transient condition, or there was a tem-
porary failure retrieving the sending domain's policy; a later
attempt to re-authenticate this message might produce a more
final result
permerror
a permanent (unrecoverable) error occurred attempting to authen-
ticate the sender; either the process couldn't be completed
locally, or there was a permanent failure retrieving the sending
domain's policy
3. Definition Of The "auth" Method
As it is currently an existing standard for sender authentication, it
is appropriate to define an authentication method identifier for
[AUTH]. The authentication method identifier "auth" is thus defined
for MTAs applying that standard for sender authentication.
4. Adding The Header To A Message
This specification makes no attempt to evaluate the relative
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strengths of various sender authentication methods that may become
available. As such, the order of the presented authentication meth-
ods and results are not relevant since ultimately the importance on
any given method over another is the decision of the MUA that is
interpreting the value of the header.
The "method" MUST refer to an authentication method declared in this
memo, or in a subsequent one, or to an authentication method name
assigned by IANA.
If an MTA applies any authentication test, it MUST add this header to
indicate at which host the test was done, which test got applied, and
what the result was. If an MTA applies more than one such test, it
MUST either add this header once per test, or one header indicating
all of the results. An MTA MUST NOT add a result to an existing
header.
An MTA adding this header in either form MUST use its own hostname
only. It MUST be a fully-qualified domain name.
For security reasons, an MTA SHOULD remove any discovered instance of
this header for which the "hostname" is its own, i.e. headers which
claim to be from the MTA but were added before the mail arrived at
the MTA for processing. A border MTA MAY also delete any discovered
instance of this header which claims to have been added within its
trust boundary. For example, a border MTA at mx.example.com SHOULD
delete any instance of this header claiming to come from mx.exam-
ple.com and MAY delete any instance of this header claiming to come
from any host in example.com prior to adding its own headers. This
applies in both directions so that hosts outside the domain cannot
claim results MUAs inside the domain might trust.
An MTA compliant with this specification MUST add this header after
performing one or more sender authentication tests. An MTA MAY add
this header containing only the "hostname" portion to explicitly
indicate that no sender authentication schemes were applied prior to
delivery of this message.
4.1. Header Position and Interpretation
In order to ensure non-ambiguous results and avoid the impact of
false headers, an MUA SHOULD NOT interpret this header unless specif-
ically instructed to do so by the user. That is, this should not be
"on by default". Naturally then, users would not activate such a
feature unless they are certain the header will be added by the
receiving MTA that accepts the mail which is ultimately read by the
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MUA, and instances of the header added by foreign MTAs will be
removed before delivery.
Furthermore, an MUA SHOULD NOT interpret this header unless the host-
name it bears appears to be one within its own trust domain as con-
figured by the user.
An MTA adding a header MUST add the header at the top of the message
so that there is generally some indication upon delivery of where in
the chain of handling MTAs the sender authentcation was done.
Further discussion of this can be found in the Security Considera-
tions section below.
4.2. Extension Fields
Additional authentication method identifiers may be defined in the
future by later revisions or extensions to this specification.
Extension identifiers beginning with "x-" will never be defined as
standard fields; such names are reserved for experimental use.
Method identifiers NOT beginning with "x-" MUST be registered with
the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) and published in an
RFC.
Extension identifiers may be defined for the following reasons:
(a) To allow additional information from emergent authentication sys-
tems to be communicated to MUAs. The names of such identifiers
should reflect the name of the method being defined, but should not
be needlessly long.
(b) To allow the creation of "sub-identifiers" which indicate different
levels of authentication and differentiate between their relative
strengths, e.g. "auth1-weak" and "auth1-strong".
Authentication method implementors are encouraged to provide adequate
information, via [MAIL] comments if necessary, to allow an MUA devel-
oper to understand or relay ancilliary details of authentication
results. For example, if it might be of interest to relay what data
was used to perform an evaluation, such information could be relayed
as a comment in the header, such as:
Authentication-Results: mx.example.com; foo=yes (2 out of 3 tests
passed)
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5. Discussion
This section discusses various implementation issues not specifically
related to security. Security issues are discussed in a later sec-
tion.
5.1. Legacy MUAs
Implementors of this proposal should be aware that many MUAs are
unlikely to be retrofit to support the new header and its semantics.
In the interests of convenience and quicker adaptation, a delivery
MTA might want to consider adding things that are processed by exist-
ing MUAs as well as the header defined by this specification. One
suggestion is to provide a Priority: header with a value that
reflects the strength of the authentication that was accomplished,
e.g. "low" for weak or no authentication, "normal" or "high" for good
authentication.
Certainly some modern MUAs can filter based on the content of this
header, but as there is keen interest in having MUAs make some kind
of graphical representation of this header's meaning, other interim
means of doing so may be necessary while this proposal is adopted.
5.2. Trusting The Header
Rather than the coding rigor of doing a digital signature on the con-
tent of this header, it may be sufficient to establish a maximum SMTP
path length between the addition of the header and final delivery.
The path length is defined as the count of Received headers above the
Authentication-Results header. If more than that maximum path length
is traversed between insertion of the header and delivery, the value
of the header should no longer be trusted to be valid.
This requires a configurable MUA setting to define this maximum path
length. The setting would need to take into account possible addi-
tional hops should the final delivery server be unavailable.
Although this approach likely bears a much shorter time to implement,
it is a less general solution than the proposed one and would proba-
bly require additional user education above the norm and thus lead to
more confusion on deployment. The MUA SHOULD trust this header if it
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is trusting such headers and the path length after the addition of
the header is less than three.
6. Conformance and Usage Requirements
An MTA or gateway conforms to this specification if it applies one or
more sender authentication mechanisms and inserts a header corre-
sponding to this standard after doing so and prior to delivery.
MTAs that are relaying mail rather than delivering it MAY perform
sender authentication or even take actions based on the results
found, but MUST NOT add a "Authentication-Results" header if relaying
rather than rejecting or discarding at the gateway. Conversely, an
MTA doing local delivery MUST add this header prior to delivery the
message in order to be compliant.
A minimal implementation which does at least one sender authentica-
tion check will add the header defined by this memo prior to invoking
local delivery procedures.
This specification places no restrictions on the processing of the
header's contents by user agents or distribution lists. It is pre-
sented to those packages solely for their own information.
7. IANA Considerations
Following the policies outlined in [IANA-CONSIDERATIONS], names of
sender authentication methods supported by this specification must be
registered with IANA under the IETF Consensus method, with the excep-
tion of experimental names as defined above.
8. Security Considerations
The following security considerations apply when applying or process-
ing the "Authentication-Results" header:
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8.1. Non-conformant MTAs
An MUA that is aware of this specification which accesses a mailbox
whose mail is handled by a non-conformant MTA is in a position to
make false conclusions based on forged headers. A malicious user or
agent could forge a header using the destination MX for a receiving
domain as the hostname token in the value of the header, and with the
rest of the value claim that the sender was properly authenticated.
The non-conformant MTA would fail to strip the forged header, and the
MUA could trust it.
It is for this reason an MUA SHOULD NOT have processing of the
"Authentication-Results" header enabled by default; instead it must
be ignored, at least for the purposes of enacting filtering deci-
sions, unless specifically enabled by the user after verifying that
the MTA is compliant. It is acceptable to have an MUA aware of this
standard, but have an explicit list of hostnames whose "Authentica-
tion-Results" headers are trustworthy, but this list SHOULD initially
be empty.
Proposed alternate solutions to this problem are nascent. Possibly
the simplest is a digital signature on the header which can be veri-
fied by a posted public key. Another would be a means to interrogate
the MTA that added the header to see if it is actually providing any
sender authentication services and saw the message in question. In
either case, a method needs to exist to verify that the host which
appears to have added the header (a) actually did so, and (b) is
legitimately adding that header for this delivery.
8.2. Header Position
Headers can sometimes be reordered enroute by intermediate MTAs. The
goal of requiring header addition only at the top of a message is an
acknowledgement that some MTAs do reorder headers, but most do not.
Thus, in the general case, there will be some indication of which
MTAs (if any) handled the message after the addition of the header
defined here.
However, this is not universally true. In an environment involving
an MTA that does reorder headers, the above-mentioned hop count test
for header validity may not be possible.
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9. Appendix - Authentication-Results Examples
This section presents some examples of the use of this header to
indicate authentication results. It makes use of some authentication
methods which are still in the draft phase, namely "domainkeys",
"sender-id" and "spf". These are not IANA-registered or otherwise
formally defined, but they are presented here under the assumption
that they eventually will be.
9.1. Trivial case; header not present
The trivial case:
From: sender@example.com
Received: from mail-router.example.com
(mail-router.example.com [1.2.3.4])
by server.sendmail.com (8.11.6/8.11.6)
with ESMTP id g1G0r1kA003489;
Fri, Feb 15 2002 17:19:07 -0800
Date: Fri, Feb 15 2002 16:54:30 -0800
To: receiver@sendmail.com
Message-Id: <12345.abc@example.com>
Subject: here's a sample
Hello! Goodbye!
The "Authentication-Results" header is completely absent. The MUA
may make no conclusion about the validity of the message. This could
be the case because the sender authentication services were not
available at the time of delivery, or no service is provided, or the
MTA is not in compliance with this specification.
9.2. Nearly-trivial case; service provided, but no authentication done
A message that was delivered by an MTA which conforms to this stan-
dard but provides no actual sender authentication service:
Authentication-Results: mail-router.example.com
header.from=sender@example.com
From: sender@example.com
Received: from mail-router.example.com
(mail-router.example.com [1.2.3.4])
by server.sendmail.com (8.11.6/8.11.6)
with ESMTP id g1G0r1kA003489;
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Fri, Feb 15 2002 17:19:07 -0800
Date: Fri, Feb 15 2002 16:54:30 -0800
To: receiver@sendmail.com
Message-Id: <12345.abc@example.com>
Subject: here's a sample
Hello! Goodbye!
The "Authentication-Results" header is present, indicating the deliv-
ering MTA (which is named in the value of the header) conforms to
this specification. The absence of any method and result tokens
indicates no sender authentication was done.
9.3. Service provided, authentication done
A message that was delivered by an MTA which conforms to this stan-
dard and applied some sender authentication:
Authentication-Results: mail-router.example.com
smtp.mail=sender@example.com; auth=pass (cram-md5)
From: sender@example.com
Received: from dialup-1-2-3-4.example-isp.com
(dialup-1-2-3-4.example-isp.com [1.2.3.4])
by mail-router.example.com (8.11.6/8.11.6)
with ESMTP id g1G0r1kA003489;
Fri, Feb 15 2002 17:19:07 -0800
Date: Fri, Feb 15 2002 16:54:30 -0800
To: receiver@sendmail.com
Message-Id: <12345.abc@example.com>
Subject: here's a sample
Hello! Goodbye!
The "Authentication-Results" header is present, indicating the deliv-
ering MTA (which is named in the value of the header) conforms to
this specification. Furthermore, the sender authenticated her-
self/himself to the MTA via a method specified in [AUTH]. The actual
method is identified in a header comment after the method's result is
indicated. The MUA could extract and relay this extra information if
desired.
9.4. Service provided, several authentications done, single MTA
A message that was relayed inbound via a single MTA which conforms to
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this standard and applied two different sender authentication checks:
Authentication-Results: mail-router.example.com
smtp.mail=sender@example.com;
auth=pass (cram-md5); spf=pass
Authentication-Results: mail-router.example.com
header.from=sender@example.com; sender-id=pass
From: sender@example.com
Received: from mail-router.example.com
(mail-router.example.com [1.2.3.4])
by dialup-1-2-3-4.example-isp.com (8.11.6/8.11.6)
with ESMTP id g1G0r1kA003489;
Fri, Feb 15 2002 17:19:07 -0800
Date: Fri, Feb 15 2002 16:54:30 -0800
To: receiver@sendmail.com
Message-Id: <12345.abc@example.com>
Subject: here's a sample
Hello! Goodbye!
The "Authentication-Results" header is present, indicating the deliv-
ering MTA (which is named in the value of the header) conforms to
this specification. Furthermore, the sender authenticated her-
self/himself to the MTA via a method specified in [AUTH], and both
SPF and Sender-ID checks were done and passed. The MUA could extract
and relay this extra information if desired.
Two "Authentication-Results" headers are required because the methods
applied did not all base their results on the same property of the
message.
9.5. Service provided, several authentications done, different MTAs
A message that was relayed inbound by two different MTAs which con-
form to this standard and applied multiple sender authentication
checks:
Authentication-Results: auth-checker.example.com
header.from=sender@example.com; sender-id=pass;
domainkeys=pass (good signature)
Received: from mail-router.example.com
(mail-router.example.com [10.11.12.13])
by auth-checker.example.com (8.11.6/8.11.6)
with ESMTP id i7PK0sH7021929;
Fri, Feb 15 2002 17:19:22 -0800
Authentication-Results: mail-router.example.com
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smtp.mail=sender@example.com; auth=pass (cram-md5);
spf=fail
Received: from dialup-1-2-3-4.example-isp.com
(dialup-1-2-3-4.example-isp.com [1.2.3.4])
by mail-router.example.com (8.11.6/8.11.6)
with ESMTP id g1G0r1kA003489;
Fri, Feb 15 2002 17:19:07 -0800
DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; s=gatsby; d=sendmail.com;
c=simple; q=dns;
b=EToRSuvUfQVP3Bkz ... rTB0t0gYnBVCM=
From: sender@example.com
Date: Fri, Feb 15 2002 16:54:30 -0800
To: receiver@sendmail.com
Message-Id: <12345.abc@example.com>
Subject: here's a sample
Hello! Goodbye!
The "Authentication-Results" header is present, indicating confor-
mance to this specification. It is present twice because two differ-
ent MTAs in the chain of delivery did authentication tests. The
first, "mail-router.example.com" reports that [AUTH] and SPF were
both used and [AUTH] passed but SPF failed. In the [AUTH] case,
additional data is provided in the comment field, which the MUA can
choose to render if desired. The second MTA, "auth-checker.exam-
ple.com", reports that it did a Sender-ID test and a DomainKeys test,
both of which which passed. Again, additional data about one of the
tests is provided as a comment, which the MUA may choose to render.
10. Acknowledgements
The author wishes to acknowledge the following for their review and
constructive criticism of this proposal: Mark Delany and Miles Libbey
of Yahoo! Inc., Jim Fenton of Cisco, and Rand Wacker and Eric Allman
of Sendmail, Inc.
11. References
Normative:
[AUTH]
Myers, J., "SMTP Service Extention for Authentication", RFC 2554,
Netscape Communications, March 1999.
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[IANA-CONSIDERATIONS]
Alvestrand, H. and T. Narten, "Guidelines for Writing an IANA Con-
siderations Section in RFCs", RFC 2434, October 1998.
[MAIL]
Resnick, P. (editor), "Internet Message Format", RFC 2822, Qual-
comm, Inc., April 2001.
[MIME]
N. Freed, N. Borenstein, "Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions
(MIME) Part One: Format of Internet Message Bodies", RFC 2045,
November 1996
[SMTP]
J. Klensin, (editor), "Simple Mail Transfer Protocol", RFC 2821,
April 2001
12. Author's Address:
Murray S. Kucherawy
Sendmail, Inc.
6425 Christie Ave., 4th Floor
Emeryville, CA
94608
USA
Comments may be sent to msk+ietf@sendmail.com.
13. Copyright Notice
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (year). 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 AND THE INTERNET
ENGINEERING TASK FORCE DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED,
INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE INFOR-
MATION HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES
OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
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