One document matched: draft-ietf-marid-submitter-00.txt

   MARID Working Group                                        E. Allman 
   Internet Draft                                         Sendmail, Inc 
   Document: draft-ietf-marid-submitter-00.txt                  H. Katz 
                                                         Microsoft Corp 
   Expires:  November 2004                                     May 2004 


                        SMTP Service Extension for 
         Indicating the Responsible Submitter of an E-mail Message 


Status of this Memo 

   This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with 
   all provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026 [STD].  

   Internet-Drafts are working documents of Task Force (IETF), its 
   areas, and its working groups.  Note that other groups may also 
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        http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt 
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Copyright Notice  

   Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2004). All Rights Reserved.  

Abstract 

   This memo defines an extension to the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol 
   SMTP) service, which allows an SMTP client to specify the responsible 
   submitter of an e-mail message.  The responsible submitter is the e-
   mail address of the entity most recently responsible for introducing 
   a message into the transport stream.  This extension helps receiving 
   e-mail servers efficiently determine whether the SMTP client is 
   authorized to transmit mail on behalf of the responsible submitter's 
   domain.  

Conventions Used in This Document 

   In examples, "C:" and "S:" indicate lines sent by the client and 
   server respectively. 

   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 RFC-2119 [KEYWORDS]. 

   << Text contained in double angle brackets describes actions that are 
   yet to be taken and decisions that are yet to be made.  No such text 
   should survive in the final version of this draft. >> 

Table of Contents 

   1. Introduction...................................................2 
   2. The SUBMITTER Service Extension................................3 
   3. The SUBMITTER Keyword of the EHLO Command......................4 
   4. The SUBMITTER Parameter of the MAIL Command....................4 
      4.1 Setting the SUBMITTER Parameter Value......................4 
      4.2 Processing the SUBMITTER Parameter.........................5 
      4.3 Transmitting to a Non-SUBMITTER Aware SMTP Server..........6 
   5. Examples.......................................................6 
      5.1 Mail Submission............................................6 
      5.2 Mail Forwarding............................................7 
      5.3 Mobile User................................................8 
      5.4 Guest E-mail Service.......................................8 
   6. Security Considerations........................................9 
   7. References.....................................................9 
      7.1 Normative References.......................................9 
      7.2 Informative References....................................10 
   8. Acknowledgments...............................................10 
   9. Authors' Addresses............................................10 
   10. Full Copyright Statement.....................................12 

1. Introduction 

   The practice of falsifying the identity of the sender of an e-mail 
   message, commonly called "spoofing", is a prevalent tactic used by 
   senders of unsolicited commercial e-mail or "spam".  A number of 
   proposals have been put forward to address the spoofing problem.  
   Notable among them are [RMX], [SPF], [LMAP] and [CALLERID].   

   These proposals have many key elements in common.  In particular, 
   they all describe a mechanism by which receiving e-mail servers can 
   validate whether the client MTA is authorized to transmit e-mail 
   messages on behalf of the sender's domain.       

   They differ in their choice of the identity used as a basis for the 
   validation, that is, in their determination of the "sender" of the 
   message.  In this specification, this identity will be referred to as 
   the "purported responsible address" of the message, that is, the 
   Internet address from which the message purports to originate.  The 
   purported responsible domain is the domain portion of that address.  
   [RMX], [SPF] and [LMAP] use the domain part of the e-mail address 
   used on the RFC 2821 MAIL FROM command, and in some cases the EHLO 
   command, as the purported responsible domain.  [CALLERID] derives the 
   purported responsible domain by examining certain RFC 2822 headers 
   specified in the body of the message. 

   Each approach has certain advantages and disadvantages. 

   Deriving the purported responsible domain from RFC 2821 data has the 
   advantage that validation can be performed before the SMTP client has 
   transmitted the message body.  If spoofing is detected, then the SMTP 
   server has the opportunity, depending upon local policy, to reject 
   the message before it is ever transmitted.  The disadvantage of this 
   approach is the risk of false positives, that is, incorrectly 
   concluding that the sender's e-mail address has been spoofed.  There 
   are today legitimate reasons why the Internet domain names used in 
   RFC 2821 commands may be different from that of the sender of an e-
   mail message.   

   Deriving the purported responsible domain from RFC 2822 headers has 
   the advantage of basing the sender validation on an identity that is 
   usually visible to the end recipient of the message.  This aids in 
   detection of a particularly noxious form of spoofing known as 
   "phishing" in which a malicious sender attempts to fool a recipient 
   into believing that a message originates from a firm well known to 
   the recipient.  This approach carries a lower risk of false positives 
   since there are fewer legitimate reasons for RFC 2822 headers to 
   differ from the true sender of the message.  The disadvantage of this 
   approach is that it does require parsing and analysis of message 
   headers.  In practice, much if not all the message body is also 
   transmitted since the SMTP protocol described in RFC 2821 provides no 
   mechanism to interrupt message transmission after the DATA command 
   has been issued. 

   It is desirable to unify these two approaches in a way that combines 
   the benefits of both while minimizing their respective disadvantages. 

   This memo describes just such a unified approach.  It uses the 
   mechanism described in [SMTP] to describe an extension to the SMTP 
   protocol.  Using this extension, an SMTP client can specify the e-
   mail address of the entity responsible for submitting the message to 
   the SMTP client in a new SUBMITTER parameter of the SMTP MAIL 
   command.  SMTP servers can use this information to validate that the 
   SMTP client is authorized to transmit e-mail on behalf of the 
   Internet domain contained in the SUBMITTER parameter.   


2. The SUBMITTER Service Extension 

   The following SMTP service extension is hereby defined: 

   (1)  The name of this SMTP service extension is "Responsible 
       Submitter"; 

   (2)  The EHLO keyword value associated with this extension is 
       "SUBMITTER"; 

   (3)  The SUBMITTER keyword has no parameters; 

   (4)  No additional SMTP verbs are defined by this extension; 

   (5)  An optional parameter is added to the MAIL command using the 
       esmtp-keyword "SUBMITTER", and is used to specify the e-mail 
       address of the entity responsible for submitting the message to 
       the SMTP client;  

   (6)  This extension is appropriate for the submission protocol 
       [SUBMIT]. 

3. The SUBMITTER Keyword of the EHLO Command 

   An SMTP server includes the SUBMITTER keyword in its EHLO response to 
   tell the SMTP client that the SUBMITTER service extension is 
   supported. 

   The SUBMITTER keyword has no parameters. 

4. The SUBMITTER Parameter of the MAIL Command 

   If the SMTP server supports the SUBMITTER extension, then the SMTP 
   client MAY include the SUBMITTER parameter in MAIL commands issued 
   during the SMTP session. 

   The syntax of the SUBMITTER parameter is: 

      "SUBMITTER=" Mailbox  

   where Mailbox is the ABNF [ABNF] production defined in Section 4.1.2 
   of [SMTP].  Characters such as SP and "=" which may occur in Mailbox 
   but are not permitted in ESMTP parameter values MUST be encoded as 
   "xtest" as described in section 4 of [DSN].  

4.1 Setting the SUBMITTER Parameter Value  

   The purpose of the SUBMITTER parameter is to allow the SMTP client to 
   indicate to the server the purported responsible address of the 
   message directly in the RFC 2821 protocol.  

   Therefore, SMTP clients who support the Responsible Submitter 
   extension SHOULD include the SUMBITTER parameter on all messages 
   where the purported responsible address, as defined in section 4 of 
   <<MARID Core Spec>> differs from the MAIL FROM address. 

   At some future time, it is likely that use of the SUBMITTER parameter 
   will be made MANDATORY whenever the purported responsible address 
   differs from the MAIL FROM address.   

   Furthermore, clients MUST, if necessary, insert such RFC 2822 headers 
   as defined in section 4 of [MARID-CORE] in order to ensure that the 
   purported responsible address determined from the RFC 2822 headers 
   matches the SUBMITTER address.  In other words, SUBMIT servers 
   supporting SUBMITTER MUST scan the RFC 2822 header for a purported 
   responsible address to be included in subsequent SUBMITTER 
   parameters, unless the MUA includes the parameter itself. 

   However, when an MTA receives a message in a transaction that does 
   not use SUBMITTER, and that MTA does not modify any of the RFC 2822 
   headers, the MTA MAY send the message onward without using the 
   SUBMITTER extension, even when the purported responsible address 
   differs from the MAIL FROM address.  In other words, MTAs are not 
   required to scan the RFC 2822 header in this situation. 

   A common model will be for the Mail User Agent (MUA) to transmit a 
   message to the SUBMIT server [SUBMIT] without a SUBMITTER parameter.  
   The SUBMIT server will then validate that the MUA is allowed to 
   submit a message using the purported Responsible Submitter address 
   through some external scheme, perhaps SMTP Authentication [SMTPAUTH].  
   The SUBMIT server, acting as an SMTP client, will then add a 
   SUBMITTER parameter for further transmission. 

   Any MTA supporting the Responsible Submitter extension that redirects 
   a message from the address listed in the RFC 2821 RCPT TO command 
   MUST modify the header of the message by: 

     (a)  Determining a new purported responsible address for the 
          message that can verifiably claim to be under the control of 
          the forwarding MTA's domain.  For example, the new purported 
          responsible address could be the name of the forwarded 
          address, the name of the forwarding mailing list, or a fixed 
          name at that domain. 

     (b)  If necessary, pre-pending a Resent-From or Resent-Sender 
          header field to the message header containing the new 
          purported responsible address. 

     (c)  Replacing the SUBMITTER parameter with the new purported 
          responsible address. 


4.2 Processing the SUBMITTER Parameter 

   Receivers of e-mail messages sent with the SUBMITTER parameter SHOULD 
   select the domain part of the SUBMITTER address value as the 
   purported responsible domain of the message, and SHOULD perform such 
   tests, including those defined in <<MARID Core Spec>>, as are deemed 
   necessary to determine whether the connecting SMTP client is 
   authorized to transmit e-mail messages on behalf of that domain. 

   When, at some future time, use of the SUBMITTER parameter becomes 
   MANDATORY, SMTP servers MAY use the MAIL FROM address as the 
   purported responsible domain in the absence of the SUBMITTER 
   parameter.   

   If the above tests indicate that the connecting SMTP client is not 
   authorized to transmit e-mail messages on behalf of the SUBMITTER 
   domain, the receiving SMTP server MAY reject the message using "550 
   5.7.1 Submitter not allowed."  The receiving SMTP server MAY 
   alternatively proceed to read the message and apply local policy. 

   If the receiving SMTP server allows the connecting SMTP client to 
   transmit message data, then the server SHOULD determine the purported 
   responsible domain of the message by examining the RFC 2822 message 
   headers as described in <<MARID Core Spec>>.  If this purported 
   responsible domain does not match the domain part of the address 
   appearing in the SUBMITTER parameter, the receiving SMTP server MUST 
   reject the message using "550 5.7.1 Submitter does not match header." 

   If no address headers meeting these criteria is found, the SMTP 
   server SHOULD reject the message using "554 5.7.7 Cannot verify 
   submitter address." 

   Verifying MTAs are strongly urged to validate the SUBMITTER parameter 
   against the header; otherwise, an attacker can trivially defeat the 
   algorithm.  

4.3 Transmitting to a Non-SUBMITTER Aware SMTP Server 

   When an MTA receives a message with a SUBMITTER parameter and must 
   forward it to another MTA that does not support the SUBMITTER 
   extension, the forwarding MTA SHOULD transmit the message without the 
   SUBMITTER parameter.  This should involve no information loss, since 
   the SUBMITTER parameter is required to contain information from the 
   message header. 

5. Examples 

   This section provides examples of how the SUBMITTER parameter would 
   be used.  The following dramatis personae appear in the examples: 

   alice@example.com “ the original sender of each e-mail message 
   bob@woodgrove.example “ the final recipient of each e-mail 
   bob@alumni.almamater.edu “ an email address used by Bob which he has 
   configured to forward mail to his office account 
   bob@woodgrove.example 
   alice@consolidatedmessenger.net “ an e-mail account provided to Alice 
   by her mobile e-mail network carrier. 

   << Need to rework these examples to each start with the message 
   headers and then describe what the subsequent SMTP transaction looks 
   like. >> 

5.1 Mail Submission 

   Under normal circumstances, Alice would configure her MUA to submit 
   her message to the mail system using the SUBMIT protocol [SUBMIT].  

   Under most circumstances this would look like a normal, authenticated 
   SMTP transaction.  The SUBMIT server will extract her name from the 
   header for use in downstream SUBMITTER parameters. 

5.2 Mail Forwarding 

   When Alice sends a message to Bob at his alumni.almamater.edu 
   account, the SMTP session from her SUBMIT server might look something 
   like this: 

      S: 220 alumni.almamater.edu ESMTP server ready 
      C: EHLO example.com 
      S: 250-alumni.almamater.edu 
      S: 250-DSN 
      S: 250-AUTH 
      S: 250-SUBMITTER 
      S: 250 SIZE 
      C: MAIL FROM:<alice@example.com> SUBMITTER=alice@example.com 
      S: 250 <alice@example.com> sender ok 
      C: RCPT TO:<bob@alumni.almamater.edu> 
      S: 250 <bob@alumni.almamater.edu> recipient ok 
      C: DATA 
      S: 354 okay, send message 
      C: (message body goes here) 
      C: . 
      S: 250 message accepted 
      C: QUIT 
      S: 221 goodbye 

   The SUBMITTER parameter is optional in this first example because 
   alice@example.com is the original sender of the message. 

   The alumni.almamater.edu MTA must now forward this message to 
   bob@woodgrove.example.  Since the original sender of the message is 
   alice@example.com, the alumni.almamater.edu MTA adds the SUBMITTER 
   parameter to indicate the forwarding address that is authorized to 
   transmit mail via that client.   

      S: 220 woodgrove.example ESMTP server ready 
      C: EHLO alumni.almamater.edu 
      S: 250-woodgrove.example  
      S: 250-DSN 
      S: 250-AUTH 
      S: 250-SUBMITTER 
      S: 250 SIZE 
      C: MAIL FROM:<alice@example.com> 
              SUBMITTER=bob@alumni.almamater.edu  
      S: 250 <alice@example.com> sender ok 
      C: RCPT TO:<bob@woodgrove.example> 
      S: 250 <bob@woodgrove.example> recipient ok 
      C: DATA 
      S: 354 okay, send message 
      C: Resent-From: bob@alumni.almamater.edu 
      C: Received By: ... 
      C: (message body goes here) 
      C: . 
      S: 250 message accepted 
      C: QUIT 
      S: 221 goodbye 

   Note that alumni.almamater.edu uses the SUBMITTER parameter on the 
   MAIL command and also inserts a Resent-From header in the message 
   body to ensure consistency of the purported responsible domain 
   derived from the RFC 2822 headers with the SUBMITTER domain.   

5.3 Mobile User 

   Alice is at the airport and uses her mobile e-mail devise to send a 
   message to Bob.  The message travels through the carrier network 
   provided by consolidatedmessenger.net, but Alice uses her example.com 
   address on the From line of all her messages so that replies go to 
   her office mailbox.   

   Here is an example of the SMTP session between the MTAs at 
   consolidatedmessanger.net and alumni.almamater.edu.   

      S: 220 alumni.almamater.edu ESMTP server ready 
      C: EHLO consolidatedmessenger.net  
      S: 250-alumni.almamater.edu  
      S: 250-DSN 
      S: 250-AUTH 
      S: 250-SUBMITTER 
      S: 250 SIZE 
      C: MAIL FROM:<alice@example.com>  
              SUBMITTER=alice@consolidatedmessenger.net  
      S: 250 <alice@example.com> sender ok 
      C: RCPT TO:<bob@alumni.almamater.edu> 
      S: 250 <bob@alumni.almamater.edu> recipient ok 
      C: DATA 
      S: 354 okay, send message 
      C: Sender: alice@consolidatedmessenger.net  
      C: Received By: ... 
      C: (message body goes here) 
      C: . 
      S: 250 message accepted 
      C: QUIT 
      S: 221 goodbye 

   Note that consolidatedmessenger.net uses the SUBMITTER parameter to 
   designate alice@consolidatedmessenger.net as the responsible from 
   address for this message.  Further this client also inserts a Sender 
   header to ensure consistency of the purported responsible domain 
   derived from the RFC 2822 headers with the SUBMITTER domain.   

5.4 Guest E-mail Service 

   While on a business trip, Alice uses the broadband access facilities 
   provided by the Exemplar Hotel to connect to the Internet and send e-
   mail.  The hotel routes all outbound e-mail through its own SMTP 
   server, email.exemplarhotel.com.   

   The SMTP session for Alice's message to Bob from the Exemplar Hotel 
   would look like this: 

      S: 220 alumni.almamater.edu ESMTP server ready 
      C: EHLO email.exemplarhotel.com  
      S: 250-alumni.almamater.edu  
      S: 250-DSN 
      S: 250-AUTH 
      S: 250-SUBMITTER 
      S: 250 SIZE 
      C: MAIL FROM:<alice@example.com> 
              SUBMITTER=guest.services@email.exemplarhotel.com  
      S: 250 <alice@example.com> sender ok 
      C: RCPT TO:<bob@alumni.almamater.edu> 
      S: 250 <bob@alumni.almamater.edu> recipient ok 
      C: DATA 
      S: 354 okay, send message 
      C: Resent-From: guest.services@email.exemplarhotel.com  
      C: Received By: ... 
      C: (message body goes here) 
      C: . 
      S: 250 message accepted 
      C: QUIT 
      S: 221 goodbye 

   Note that email.exemplarhotel.com uses the SUBMITTER parameter to 
   designate a generic account guest.services@email.exemplarhotel.com as 
   the responsible submitter address for this message.  A generic 
   account is used since Alice herself does not have an account at that 
   domain.  Further this client also inserts a Resent-From header to 
   ensure consistency of the purported responsible domain derived from 
   the RFC 2822 headers with the SUBMITTER domain.   


6. Security Considerations 

   << To be completed.  >> 


7. References 

7.1 Normative References 

    [ABNF]        Crocker, D. and P. Overell, "Augmented BNF for Syntax 
                   Specifications: ABNF", RFC 2234, November 1997. 

    [DSN]          Moore, K., "Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) 
                   Service Extension for 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.   

    [MARID-CORE]   Lyon, J., "MTA Authentication Records in DNS", 
                   draft-ietf-marid-core-00, May 2004. 

    [MSG-FORMAT]    Resnick, P., Ed., "Internet Message Format", RFC 
                   2822, April 2001. 

    [SUBMIT]       Gellens, R. and J. Klensin, "Message Submission", RFC 
                   2476, December 1998. 

    [SMTP]         Klensin, J., "Simple Mail Transfer Protocol", RFC 
                   2821, April 2001.   

    [SMTPAUTH]     Meyers, J., "SMTP Service Extension for 
                   Authentication", RFC 2554, March 1999. 

7.2 Informative References 

    [CALLERID]     Atkinson, B, Caller ID for E-mail, May 20, 2004, 
                   draft-atkinson-callerid-00. 

    [LMAP]         DeKok, A. (Ed.), Lightweight MTA Authentication 
                   Protocol (LMAP) Discussion and Applicability, 
                   November 3, 2003, draft-irtf-asrg-lmap-discussion-00. 

    [RMX]          Danisch, Hadmut, The RMX DNS RR and method for SMTP 
                   Sender Authorization, draft-danisch-dns-rr-smtp-03.  

    [SPF]          Wong, Meng Weng, Mark Lentczner, Sender Permitted 
                   From, draft-mengwong-spf-01. 

8. Acknowledgments 

   The author would like to thank the following for their comments and 
   suggestions, which greatly improved this document:  

      Robert Atkinson, Simon Attwell, Jim Lyon, Bruce McMillan,  
      Sam Neely, Pete Resnick, Nick Shelness, Meng Wong 

9. Authors' Addresses 

   Eric Allman  
   Sendmail, Inc.  
   6425 Christie Ave, Suite 400  
   Emeryville, CA 94608  
   USA  

   E-mail: eric@sendmail.com  

   Harry Katz 
   Microsoft Corp. 
   1 Microsoft Way 
   Redmond, WA 98052 
   USA 

   E-mail: hkatz@microsoft.com 

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