Some thoughts on Domain Keys for SMTP
Tags :Technical
This is the proposal from Yahoo! for an SMTP
standard for mail verification of sorts. Basically it looks to verify
if the sending domain was forged, through a form of key checking. Today's
discussion will take a quick peek at the steps required to set it up. The
diagram this describes can be found right
here.
Set up:
The domain owner (typically the team running the email systems within a
company or service provider) generates a public/private key pair to use
for signing all outgoing messages (multiple key pairs are allowed). The
public key is published in DNS, and the private key is made available to
their DomainKey-enabled outbound email servers.
Signing: When each email
is sent by an authorized end-user within the domain, the DomainKey-enabled
email system automatically uses the stored private key to generate a digital
signature of the message. This signature is then pre-pended as a header
to the email, and the email is sent on to the target recipient's mail server.
So if we follow this, you as the faithful
email administrator, must create the key structure and get it published
in DNS for the receiving servers to work with. If you use a service
provider for outbound email services, then there could be a longer delay
or even non-support at getting this implemented. I do like the idea
of multiple keys for numerous domains. Of course there could be management
issues if DNS is not handled properly or no good tools are in place. I
cannot see handling this with text files and FTP. A good management
console would be a bonus. Then your mail server must be able to go
out and check the key for verification. How many of you block servers
from making outbound calls? And then each call would need to go to
the DNS server for the domain. So making a simple list does not work.
You will get referred all over the place as you do now for web address
lookups for browsing.
Tomorrow lets talk about the receiving
side and put all this together.
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On Wednesday, August 18th, 2004 by Chris Miller
