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draft-ietf-dmarc-dmarcbis-01.xml
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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!-- name="GENERATOR" content="github.com/mmarkdown/mmark Mmark Markdown Processor - mmark.miek.nl" -->
<rfc version="3" ipr="trust200902" docName="draft-ietf-dmarc-dmarcbis-01" submissionType="IETF" category="std" xml:lang="en" xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude" obsoletes="7489" consensus="true">
<front>
<title abbrev="DMARCbis">Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC)</title><seriesInfo value="draft-ietf-dmarc-dmarcbis-01" stream="IETF" status="standard" name="Internet-Draft"></seriesInfo>
<author initials="T." surname="Herr (ed)" fullname="Todd M. Herr"><organization>Valimail</organization><address><postal><street></street>
</postal><email>[email protected]</email>
</address></author>
<author initials="J." surname="Levine (ed)" fullname="John Levine"><organization>Standcore LLC</organization><address><postal><street></street>
</postal><email>[email protected]</email>
</address></author>
<date/>
<area>Application</area>
<workgroup>DMARC</workgroup>
<abstract>
<t>This document describes the Domain-based Message Authentication,
Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC) protocol.</t>
<t><em>Tickets 75, 80, 85, 96, and 108</em></t>
<t>DMARC permits the owner of an email author's domain name to enable
validation of the domain's use, to indicate the Domain Owner's or
Public Suffix Operator's
severity of concern regarding failed validation, and to request
reports about use of the domain name. Mail receiving organizations
can use this information when evaluating handling choices for
incoming mail.</t>
<t>This document obsoletes RFC 7489.</t>
</abstract>
</front>
<middle>
<section anchor="introduction"><name>Introduction</name>
<t>RFC EDITOR: PLEASE REMOVE THE FOLLOWING PARAGRAPH BEFORE PUBLISHING:
The source for this draft is maintained in GitHub at:
<eref target="https://github.com/ietf-wg-dmarc/draft-ietf-dmarc-dmarcbis">https://github.com/ietf-wg-dmarc/draft-ietf-dmarc-dmarcbis</eref></t>
<t><em>Tickets 80, 85, 96, and 108</em></t>
<t>The Sender Policy Framework (<xref target="RFC7208"></xref>) and DomainKeys Identified
Mail (<xref target="RFC6376"></xref>) protocols provide domain-level authentication
which is not directly associated with the RFC5322.From domain, and
DMARC builds on those protocols. Using DMARC, Domain Owners that
originate email can publish a DNS TXT record with their email
authentication policies, state their level of concern for mail that
fails authentication checks, and request reports about email use of
the domain name. Similarly, Public Suffix Operators (PSOs) may do
the same for PSO Controlled Domain Names and non-existent subdomains
of the PSO Controlled Domain Name.</t>
<t><em>Ticket 52</em></t>
<t>As with SPF and DKIM, DMARC authentication checks result in verdicts
of "pass" or "fail". A DMARC pass verdict requires not only that SPF
or DKIM pass for the message in question, but also that the domain
validated by the SPF or DKIM check is aligned with the RFC5322.From
domain. In the DMARC protocol, two domains are said to be "in
alignment" if they have the same Organizational Domain.</t>
<t><em>Tickets 75, 80, 85, and 108</em></t>
<t>A DMARC pass result indicates only that the RFC5322.From domain has
been authenticated in that message; there is no explicit or implied
value assertion attributed to a message that receives such a verdict.
A mail-receiving organization that performs a DMARC validation check
on inbound mail can choose to use the result and the published
severity of concern expresed by the Domain Owner or PSO for authentication
failures to inform its mail handling decision for that message.</t>
<t>For a mail-receiving organization supporting DMARC, a message that
passes validation is part of a message stream that is reliably
associated with the Domain Owner and/or any, some, or all of the
Authenticated Identifiers. Therefore,
reputation assessment of that stream by the mail-receiving organization
does not need to be encumbered by accounting for unauthorized use of any
domains. A message that fails this validation cannot reliably be associated with
the Domain Owner's domain and its reputation.</t>
<t><em>Tickets 80 and 108</em></t>
<t>DMARC, in the associated <xref target="DMARC-Aggregate-Reporting"></xref> and <xref target="DMARC-Failure-Reporting"></xref>
documents, also describes a reporting framework in which mail-receiving domains
can generate regular reports containing data about messages seen that claim
to be from domains that publish DMARC policies, and send those reports to
one or more addresses as requested by the Domain Owner's or PSO's DMARC policy
record.</t>
<t>Experience with DMARC has revealed some issues of interoperability
with email in general that require due consideration before
deployment, particularly with configurations that can cause mail to
be rejected. These are discussed in <xref target="other-topics"></xref>.</t>
</section>
<section anchor="requirements"><name>Requirements</name>
<t>Specification of DMARC is guided by the following high-level goals,
security dependencies, detailed requirements, and items that are
documented as out of scope.</t>
<section anchor="high-level-goals"><name>High-Level Goals</name>
<t>DMARC has the following high-level goals:</t>
<t><em>Tickets 85 and 108</em></t>
<ul>
<li><t>Allow Domain Owners and PSOs to assert their severity of concern for
authentication failures for messages purporting to have
authorship within the domain.</t>
</li>
<li><t>Allow Domain Owners and PSOs to verify their authentication deployment.</t>
</li>
<li><t>Minimize implementation complexity for both senders and receivers,
as well as the impact on handling and delivery of legitimate
messages.</t>
</li>
<li><t>Reduce the amount of successfully delivered spoofed email.</t>
</li>
<li><t>Work at Internet scale.</t>
</li>
</ul>
</section>
<section anchor="out-of-scope"><name>Out of Scope</name>
<t><em>Ticket 109</em></t>
<t>Several topics and issues are specifically out of scope for this
work. These include the following:</t>
<ul>
<li><t>different treatment of messages that are not authenticated versus
those that fail authentication;</t>
</li>
<li><t>evaluation of anything other than RFC5322.From header field;</t>
</li>
<li><t>multiple reporting formats;</t>
</li>
<li><t>publishing policy other than via the DNS;</t>
</li>
<li><t>reporting or otherwise evaluating other than the last-hop IP
address;</t>
</li>
<li><t>attacks in the From: header field, also known as "display name"
attacks;</t>
</li>
<li><t>authentication of entities other than domains, since DMARC is
built upon SPF and DKIM, which authenticate domains; and</t>
</li>
<li><t>content analysis.</t>
</li>
</ul>
</section>
<section anchor="scalability"><name>Scalability</name>
<t>Scalability is a major issue for systems that need to operate in a
system as widely deployed as current SMTP email. For this reason,
DMARC seeks to avoid the need for third parties or pre-sending
agreements between senders and receivers. This preserves the
positive aspects of the current email infrastructure.</t>
<t>Although DMARC does not introduce third-party senders (namely
external agents authorized to send on behalf of an operator) to the
email-handling flow, it also does not preclude them. Such third
parties are free to provide services in conjunction with DMARC.</t>
</section>
<section anchor="anti-phishing"><name>Anti-Phishing</name>
<t>DMARC is designed to prevent bad actors from sending mail that claims
to come from legitimate senders, particularly senders of
transactional email (official mail that is about business
transactions). One of the primary uses of this kind of spoofed mail
is phishing (enticing users to provide information by pretending to
be the legitimate service requesting the information). Thus, DMARC
is significantly informed by ongoing efforts to enact large-scale,
Internet-wide anti-phishing measures.</t>
<t>Although DMARC can only be used to combat specific forms of exact-
domain spoofing directly, the DMARC mechanism has been found to be
useful in the creation of reliable and defensible message streams.</t>
<t>DMARC does not attempt to solve all problems with spoofed or
otherwise fraudulent email. In particular, it does not address the
use of visually similar domain names ("cousin domains") or abuse of
the RFC5322.From human-readable <display-name>.</t>
<t><em>Ticket 108</em></t>
</section>
</section>
<section anchor="terminology"><name>Terminology and Definitions</name>
<t>This section defines terms used in the rest of the document.</t>
<section anchor="conventions-used-in-this-document"><name>Conventions Used in This Document</name>
<t>The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD",
"SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
document are to be interpreted as described in BCP 14 <xref target="RFC2119"></xref> <xref target="RFC8174"></xref>
when, and only when, they appear in all capitals, as shown here.</t>
<t>Readers are encouraged to be familiar with the contents of
<xref target="RFC5598"></xref>. In particular, that document defines various roles in
the messaging infrastructure that can appear the same or separate in
various contexts. For example, a Domain Owner could, via the
messaging security mechanisms on which DMARC is based, delegate the
ability to send mail as the Domain Owner to a third party with
another role. This document does not address the distinctions among
such roles; the reader is encouraged to become familiar with that
material before continuing.</t>
</section>
<section anchor="authenticated-identifiers"><name>Authenticated Identifiers</name>
<t>Domain-level identifiers that are validated using authentication technologies
are referred to as "Authenticated Identifiers". See <xref target="authenicated-mechanisms"></xref>
for details about the supported mechanisms.</t>
</section>
<section anchor="author-domain"><name>Author Domain</name>
<t>The domain name of the apparent author, as extracted from the From: header field.</t>
</section>
<section anchor="domain-owner"><name>Domain Owner</name>
<t>An entity or organization that owns a DNS domain. The
term "owns" here indicates that the entity or organization being
referenced holds the registration of that DNS domain. Domain
Owners range from complex, globally distributed organizations, to
service providers working on behalf of non-technical clients, to
individuals responsible for maintaining personal domains. This
specification uses this term as analogous to an Administrative
Management Domain as defined in <xref target="RFC5598"></xref>. It can also refer
to delegates, such as Report Receivers, when those are outside of
their immediate management domain.</t>
<t><em>Ticket 52</em></t>
</section>
<section anchor="identifier-alignment"><name>Identifier Alignment</name>
<t>When the domain in the address in the From: header field has the
same Organizational Domain as a domain validated by SPF or DKIM
(or both), it has Identifier Alignment. (see below)</t>
</section>
<section anchor="longest-psd"><name>Longest PSD</name>
<t>The term Longest PSD is defined in <xref target="DMARC-PSD"></xref>.</t>
</section>
<section anchor="mail-receiver"><name>Mail Receiver</name>
<t>The entity or organization that receives and processes email.<br />
Mail Receivers operate one or more Internet- facing Mail Transport
Agents (MTAs).</t>
</section>
<section anchor="non-existent-domains"><name>Non-existent Domains</name>
<t>For DMARC purposes, a non-existent domain is a domain for which there
is an NXDOMAIN or NODATA response for A, AAAA, and MX records. This
is a broader definition than that in <xref target="RFC8020"></xref>.</t>
</section>
<section anchor="organizational-domain"><name>Organizational Domain</name>
<t>The domain that was registered with a domain name registrar. In
the absence of more accurate methods, heuristics are used to determine
this, since it is not always the case that the registered domain name
is simply a top-level DNS domain plus one component (e.g., "example.com",
where "com" is a top-level domain). The Organizational Domain is
determined by applying the algorithm found in <xref target="determining-the-organizational-domain"></xref>.</t>
</section>
<section anchor="public-suffix-domain"><name>Public Suffix Domain (PSD)</name>
<t>The term Public Suffix Domain is defined in <xref target="DMARC-PSD"></xref>.</t>
</section>
<section anchor="public-suffix-operator"><name>Public Suffix Operator (PSO)</name>
<t>The term Public Suffix Operator is defined in <xref target="DMARC-PSD"></xref>.</t>
</section>
<section anchor="pso-controlled-domain-names"><name>PSO Controlled Domain Names</name>
<t>The term PSO Controlled Domain Names is defined in <xref target="DMARC-PSD"></xref>.</t>
<t><em>Tickets 108 and 109</em></t>
</section>
<section anchor="report-receiver"><name>Report Receiver</name>
<t>An operator that receives reports from another operator
implementing the reporting mechanisms described in this document.
Such an operator might be receiving reports about messages related
to a domain for which it is the Domain Owner or PSO, or reports about
messages related to another operator's domain. This term applies
collectively to the system components that receive and process these
reports and the organizations that operate them.</t>
</section>
<section anchor="more-on-identifier-alignment"><name>More on Identifier Alignment</name>
<t><em>Ticket 109</em></t>
<t>Email authentication technologies authenticate various (and
disparate) aspects of an individual message. For example, DKIM <xref target="RFC6376"></xref>
authenticates the domain that affixed a signature to the message,
while SPF <xref target="RFC7208"></xref> can authenticate either the domain that appears in the
RFC5321.MailFrom (MAIL FROM) portion of <xref target="RFC5322"></xref> or the RFC5321.EHLO/
HELO domain, or both. These may be different domains, and they are
typically not visible to the end user.</t>
<t><em>Ticket 52</em></t>
<t>DMARC authenticates use of the RFC5322.From domain by requiring that
it have the same Organizational Domain (be aligned with) as an
Authenticated Identifier. The RFC5322.From domain was selected as the
central identity of the DMARC mechanism because it is a required
message header field and therefore guaranteed to be present in
compliant messages, and most Mail User Agents (MUAs) represent the
RFC5322.From header field as the originator of the message and render
some or all of this header field's content to end users.</t>
<t>Thus, this field is the one used by end users to identify the source
of the message and therefore is a prime target for abuse. Many
high-profile email sources, such as email service providers, require
that the sending agent have authenticated before email can be
generated. Thus, for these mailboxes, the mechanism described in
this document provides recipient end users with strong evidence that
the message was indeed originated by the agent they associate with
that mailbox, if the end user knows that these various protections
have been provided.</t>
<t>Domain names in this context are to be compared in a case-insensitive
manner, per <xref target="RFC4343"></xref>.</t>
<t>It is important to note that Identifier Alignment cannot occur with a
message that is not valid per <xref target="RFC5322"></xref>, particularly one with a
malformed, absent, or repeated RFC5322.From header field, since in that case
there is no reliable way to determine a DMARC policy that applies to
the message. Accordingly, DMARC operation is predicated on the input
being a valid RFC5322 message object, and handling of such
non-compliant cases is outside of the scope of this specification.
Further discussion of this can be found in <xref target="extract-author-domain"></xref>.</t>
<t><em>Ticket 52</em></t>
<t>Each of the underlying authentication technologies that DMARC takes
as input yields authenticated domains as their outputs when they
succeed.</t>
<section anchor="dkim-identifiers"><name>DKIM-Authenticated Identifiers</name>
<t><em>Ticket 52</em></t>
<t>DMARC requires Identifier Alignment based on the result of a DKIM
authentication because a message can bear a valid signature from any
domain, including domains used by a mailing list or even a bad actor.
Therefore, merely bearing a valid signature is not enough to infer
authenticity of the Author Domain.</t>
<t>To illustrate, if a validated DKIM signature successfully verifies
with a "d=" domain of "example.com", and the RFC5322.From address is
"[email protected]", the DKIM "d=" domain and the RFC5322.From
domain are considered to be "in alignment". However, a DKIM
signature bearing a value of "d=com" would never allow an "in
alignment" result, as "com" should appear on all public suffix lists
(see <xref target="public-suffix-lists"></xref>) and therefore cannot be an
Organizational Domain.</t>
<t>Note that a single email can contain multiple DKIM signatures, and it
is considered to be a DMARC "pass" if any DKIM signature is aligned
and verifies.</t>
</section>
<section anchor="spf-identifiers"><name>SPF-Authenticated Identifiers</name>
<t><em>Ticket 52</em></t>
<t>DMARC permits Identifier Alignment based on the result of an SPF
authentication. As with DKIM, Identifier Alignement is determined
based on whether or not two domain's Organizational Domains are the
same.</t>
<t>For example, if a message passes an SPF check with an
RFC5321.MailFrom domain of "cbg.bounces.example.com", and the address
portion of the RFC5322.From header field contains
"[email protected]", the Authenticated RFC5321.MailFrom domain
identifier and the RFC5322.From domain are considered to be "in
alignment" because they have the same Organizational Domain
("example.com").</t>
<t><em>Ticket 1</em></t>
<t>The reader should note that SPF alignment checks in DMARC rely solely
on the RFC5321.MailFrom domain. This differs from section 2.3 of
<xref target="RFC7208"></xref>, which recommends that SPF checks be done on not only the
"MAIL FROM" but also on a separate check of the "HELO" identity.</t>
</section>
<section anchor="alignment-and-extension-technologies"><name>Alignment and Extension Technologies</name>
<t>If in the future DMARC is extended to include the use of other
authentication mechanisms, the extensions will need to allow for
domain identifier extraction so that alignment with the RFC5322.From
domain can be verified.</t>
</section>
</section>
<section anchor="determining-the-organizational-domain"><name>Determining The Organizational Domain</name>
<t>The Organizational Domain is determined using the following
algorithm:</t>
<ol>
<li><t>Acquire a "public suffix" list, i.e., a list of DNS domain names
reserved for registrations. Some country Top-Level Domains
(TLDs) make specific registration requirements, e.g., the United
Kingdom places company registrations under ".co.uk"; other TLDs
such as ".com" appear in the IANA registry of top-level DNS
domains. A public suffix list is the union of all of these.
<xref target="public-suffix-lists"></xref> contains some discussion about obtaining a public
suffix list.</t>
</li>
<li><t>Break the subject DNS domain name into a set of "n" ordered
labels. Number these labels from right to left; e.g., for
"example.com", "com" would be label 1 and "example" would be
label 2.</t>
</li>
<li><t>Search the public suffix list for the name that matches the
largest number of labels found in the subject DNS domain. Let
that number be "x".</t>
</li>
<li><t>Construct a new DNS domain name using the name that matched from
the public suffix list and prefixing to it the "x+1"th label from
the subject domain. This new name is the Organizational Domain.</t>
</li>
</ol>
<t>Thus, since "com" is an IANA-registered TLD, a subject domain of
"a.b.c.d.example.com" would have an Organizational Domain of
"example.com".</t>
<t>The process of determining a suffix is currently a heuristic one. No
list is guaranteed to be accurate or current.</t>
<t>Ticket 109, Original text:
(Seems like these two paragraphs should be moved elsewhere?)</t>
<artwork>In addition to Mediators, mail that is sent by authorized,
independent third parties might not be sent with Identifier
Alignment, also preventing a "pass" result.
Issues specific to the use of policy mechanisms alongside DKIM are
further discussed in [@RFC6377], particularly Section 5.2.
</artwork>
</section>
</section>
<section anchor="overview"><name>Overview</name>
<t>This section provides a general overview of the design and operation
of the DMARC environment.</t>
<section anchor="authenicated-mechanisms"><name>Authentication Mechanisms</name>
<t>The following mechanisms for determining Authenticated Identifiers
are supported in this version of DMARC:</t>
<t><em>Ticket 109</em></t>
<ul>
<li><t>DKIM, <xref target="RFC6376"></xref>, which provides a domain-level identifier in the content of
the "d=" tag of a validated DKIM-Signature header field.</t>
</li>
<li><t>SPF, <xref target="RFC7208"></xref>, which can authenticate both the domain found in an <xref target="RFC5322"></xref>
HELO/EHLO command (the HELO identity) and the domain found in an
SMTP MAIL command (the MAIL FROM identity). Section 2.4 of
<xref target="RFC7208"></xref> describes MAIL FROM processing for cases in which the MAIL
command has a null path.</t>
</li>
</ul>
</section>
<section anchor="key-concepts"><name>Key Concepts</name>
<t><em>Ticket 108</em></t>
<t>DMARC policies are published by the Domain Owner or PSO, and retrieved by
the Mail Receiver during the SMTP session, via the DNS.</t>
<t><em>Tickets 52 and 75</em></t>
<t>DMARC's filtering function is based on whether the RFC5322.From
domain is aligned with (has the same Organizational Domain as) an
authenticated domain name from SPF or DKIM. When a DMARC policy
is published for the domain name found in the RFC5322.From header
field, and that domain name is not validated through SPF or DKIM,
the handling of that message can be affected by that DMARC policy
when delivered to a participating receiver.</t>
<t>It is important to note that the authentication mechanisms employed
by DMARC authenticate only a DNS domain and do not authenticate the
local-part of any email address identifier found in a message, nor do
they validate the legitimacy of message content.</t>
<t><em>Tickets 108 and 109</em></t>
<t>DMARC's feedback component involves the collection of information
about received messages claiming to be from the Author Domain
for periodic aggregate reports to the Domain Owner or PSO. The
parameters and format for such reports are discussed in <xref target="DMARC-Aggregate-Reporting"></xref></t>
<t>A DMARC-enabled Mail Receiver might also generate per-message reports
that contain information related to individual messages that fail SPF
and/or DKIM. Per-message failure reports are a useful source of
information when debugging deployments (if messages can be determined
to be legitimate even though failing authentication) or in analyzing
attacks. The capability for such services is enabled by DMARC but
defined in other referenced material such as <xref target="RFC6591"></xref> and <xref target="DMARC-Failure-Reporting"></xref></t>
<t>A message satisfies the DMARC checks if at least one of the supported
authentication mechanisms:</t>
<ol>
<li><t>produces a "pass" result, and</t>
</li>
<li><t>produces that result based on an identifier that is in alignment,
as defined in <xref target="terminology"></xref>.</t>
</li>
</ol>
</section>
<section anchor="flow-diagram"><name>Flow Diagram</name>
<t><em>Ticket 2</em></t>
<sourcecode type="ascii-art"> +---------------+ +--------------------+
| Author Domain |< . . . . . . . . . . . . | Return-Path Domain |
+---------------+ . +--------------------+
| . ^
V V .
+-----------+ +--------+ +----------+ v
| MSA |<***>| DKIM | | DMARC | +----------+
| Service | | Signer | | Verifier |<***>| SPF |
+-----------+ +--------+ +----------+ * | Verifier |
| ^ * +----------+
| * *
V v *
+------+ (~~~~~~~~~~~~) +------+ * +----------+
| sMTA |------->( other MTAs )----->| rMTA | **>| DKIM |
+------+ (~~~~~~~~~~~~) +------+ | Verifier |
| +----------+
| ^
V .
+-----------+ .
+---------+ | MDA | v
| User |<--| Filtering | +-----------+
| Mailbox | | Engine | | DKIM |
+---------+ +-----------+ | Signing |
| Domain(s) |
+-----------+
MSA = Mail Submission Agent
MDA = Mail Delivery Agent
</sourcecode>
<t>The above diagram shows a simple flow of messages through a DMARC-
aware system. Solid lines denote the actual message flow, dotted
lines involve DNS queries used to retrieve message policy related to
the supported message authentication schemes, and asterisk lines
indicate data exchange between message-handling modules and message
authentication modules. "sMTA" is the sending MTA, and "rMTA" is the
receiving MTA.</t>
<t><em>Ticket 2</em></t>
<t>Put simply, when a message reaches a DMARC-aware rMTA, a DNS query
will be initiated to determine if the author domain has published
a DMARC policy. If a policy is found, the rMTA will use the results
of SPF and DKIM validation checks to determine the ultimate DMARC
authentication status. The DMARC status can then factor into the
message handling decision made by the recipient's mail sytsem.</t>
<t>More details on specific actions for the parties involved can be
found in <xref target="domain-owner-actions"></xref> and <xref target="mail-receiver-actions"></xref>.</t>
</section>
</section>
<section anchor="use-of-rfc5322-from"><name>Use of RFC5322.From</name>
<t>One of the most obvious points of security scrutiny for DMARC is the
choice to focus on an identifier, namely the RFC5322.From address,
which is part of a body of data that has been trivially forged
throughout the history of email.</t>
<t>Several points suggest that it is the most correct and safest thing
to do in this context:</t>
<ul>
<li><t>Of all the identifiers that are part of the message itself, this
is the only one guaranteed to be present.</t>
</li>
<li><t>It seems the best choice of an identifier on which to focus, as
most MUAs display some or all of the contents of that field in a
manner strongly suggesting those data as reflective of the true
originator of the message.</t>
</li>
</ul>
<t>The absence of a single, properly formed RFC5322.From header field renders
the message invalid. Handling of such a message is outside of the
scope of this specification.</t>
<t>Since the sorts of mail typically protected by DMARC participants
tend to only have single Authors, DMARC participants generally
operate under a slightly restricted profile of RFC5322 with respect
to the expected syntax of this field. See <xref target="mail-receiver-actions"></xref> for details.</t>
</section>
<section anchor="policy"><name>Policy</name>
<t><em>Tickets 75, 85 and 108</em></t>
<t>DMARC policies are published by Domain Owners and PSOs and can be
used by Mail Receivers to inform their message handling decisions.</t>
<t>A Domain Owner or PSO advertises DMARC participation of one or more of its
domains by adding a DNS TXT record (described in <xref target="dmarc-policy-record"></xref>) to
those domains. In doing so, Domain Owners and PSOs indicate their severity of
concern regarding failed authentication for email messages making use
of their domain in the RFC5322.From header field as well as the provision
of feedback about those messages. Mail Receivers in turn can take into
account the Domain Owner's severity of concern when making handling
decisions about email messages that fail DMARC authentication checks.</t>
<t>A Domain Owner or PSO may choose not to participate in DMARC evaluation by
Mail Receivers. In this case, the Domain Owner simply declines to
advertise participation in those schemes. For example, if the
results of path authorization checks ought not be considered as part
of the overall DMARC result for a given Author Domain, then the
Domain Owner does not publish an SPF policy record that can produce
an SPF pass result.</t>
<t>A Mail Receiver implementing the DMARC mechanism SHOULD make a
best-effort attempt to adhere to the Domain Owner's or PSO's published DMARC
Domain Owner Assessment Policy when a message fails the DMARC test.<br />
Since email streams can be complicated (due to forwarding, existing RFC5322.From
domain-spoofing services, etc.), Mail Receivers MAY deviate from a published
Domain Owner Assessment Policy during message processing and SHOULD
make available the fact of and reason for the deviation to the Domain
Owner via feedback reporting, specifically using the "PolicyOverride"
feature of the aggregate report defined in <xref target="DMARC-Aggregate-Reporting"></xref></t>
<section anchor="dmarc-policy-record"><name>DMARC Policy Record</name>
<t>Domain Owner and PSO DMARC preferences are stored as DNS TXT records in
subdomains named "_dmarc". For example, the Domain Owner of
"example.com" would post DMARC preferences in a TXT record at
"_dmarc.example.com". Similarly, a Mail Receiver wishing to query
for DMARC preferences regarding mail with an RFC5322.From domain of
"example.com" would issue a TXT query to the DNS for the subdomain of
"_dmarc.example.com". The DNS-located DMARC preference data will
hereafter be called the "DMARC record".</t>
<t>DMARC's use of the Domain Name Service is driven by DMARC's use of
domain names and the nature of the query it performs. The query
requirement matches with the DNS, for obtaining simple parametric
information. It uses an established method of storing the
information, associated with the target domain name, namely an
isolated TXT record that is restricted to the DMARC context. Use of
the DNS as the query service has the benefit of reusing an extremely
well-established operations, administration, and management
infrastructure, rather than creating a new one.</t>
<t>Per <xref target="RFC1035"></xref>, a TXT record can comprise several "character-string"
objects. Where this is the case, the module performing DMARC
evaluation MUST concatenate these strings by joining together the
objects in order and parsing the result as a single string.</t>
</section>
<section anchor="dmarc-uris"><name>DMARC URIs</name>
<t><xref target="RFC3986"></xref> defines a generic syntax for identifying a resource. The DMARC
mechanism uses this as the format by which a Domain Owner or PSO specifies
the destination for the two report types that are supported.</t>
<t><em>Ticket 54</em></t>
<t>The place such URIs are specified (see <xref target="general-record-format"></xref>) allows
a list of these to be provided. The list of URIs is separated by commas
(ASCII 0x2c). A report is normally sent to each listed URI in the order
provided in the DMARC record.</t>
<t><em>Ticket 53</em></t>
<t>A formal definition is provided in <xref target="formal-definition"></xref>.</t>
</section>
<section anchor="general-record-format"><name>General Record Format</name>
<t>DMARC records follow the extensible "tag-value" syntax for DNS-based
key records defined in DKIM <xref target="RFC6376"></xref>.</t>
<t><xref target="iana-considerations"></xref> creates a registry for known DMARC tags and registers the
initial set defined in this document. Only tags defined in this
document or in later extensions, and thus added to that registry, are
to be processed; unknown tags MUST be ignored.</t>
<t>The following tags are introduced as the initial valid DMARC tags:</t>
<t><em>Ticket 52</em></t>
<t><em>Tickets 4 and 109</em></t>
<dl>
<dt>fo:</dt>
<dd><t>Failure reporting options (plain-text; OPTIONAL; default is "0")
Provides requested options for generation of failure reports.
Report generators MAY choose to adhere to the requested options.
This tag's content MUST be ignored if a "ruf" tag (below) is not
also specified. Failure reporting options are shown below. The value
of this tag is either "0", "1", or a colon-separated list of the
options represented by alphabetic characters.</t>
<dl>
<dt>0:</dt>
<dd>Generate a DMARC failure report if all underlying
authentication mechanisms fail to produce an aligned "pass"
result.</dd>
<dt>1:</dt>
<dd>Generate a DMARC failure report if any underlying
authentication mechanism produced something other than an
aligned "pass" result.</dd>
<dt>d:</dt>
<dd>Generate a DKIM failure report if the message had a signature
that failed evaluation, regardless of its alignment. DKIM-
specific reporting is described in <xref target="RFC6651"></xref>.</dd>
<dt>s:</dt>
<dd>Generate an SPF failure report if the message failed SPF
evaluation, regardless of its alignment. SPF-specific
reporting is described in <xref target="RFC6652"></xref>.</dd>
</dl></dd>
</dl>
<t><em>Tickets 85 and 108</em></t>
<dl>
<dt>np:</dt>
<dd>Domain Owner Assessment Policy for non-existent subdomains
(plain-text; OPTIONAL). Indicates the severity of concern the
Domain Owner or PSO has for mail using non-existent subdomains of the
domain queried. It applies only to non-existent subdomains of
the domain queried and not to either existing subdomains or
the domain itself. Its syntax is identical to that of the "p"
tag defined below. If the "np" tag is absent, the policy
specified by the "sp" tag (if the "sp" tag is present) or the
policy specified by the "p" tag, if the "sp" tag is not present,
MUST be applied for non-existent subdomains. Note that "np" will
be ignored for DMARC records published on subdomains of Organizational
Domains and PSDs due to the effect of the DMARC policy discovery
mechanism described in <xref target="policy-discovery"></xref>.</dd>
</dl>
<t><em>Tickets 72 and 85</em></t>
<dl>
<dt>p:</dt>
<dd><t>Domain Owner Assessment Policy (plain-text; RECOMMENDED for policy
records). Indicates the severity of concern the Domain Owner or PSO
has for mail using its domain but not passing DMARC validation.
Policy applies to the domain queried and to subdomains, unless
subdomain policy is explicitly described using the "sp" or "np" tags.
This tag is mandatory for policy records only, but not for third-party
reporting records (see <xref target="DMARC-Aggregate-Reporting"></xref> and <xref target="DMARC-Failure-Reporting"></xref>)
Possible values are as follows:</t>
<dl>
<dt>none:</dt>
<dd>The Domain Owner offers no expression of concern.</dd>
<dt>quarantine:</dt>
<dd>The Domain Owner considers such mail to be suspicious. It
is possible the mail is valid, although the failure creates
a significant concern.</dd>
<dt>reject:</dt>
<dd>The Domain Owner considers all such failures to be a clear
indication that the use of the domain name is not valid. See
<xref target="rejecting-messages"></xref> for some discussion of SMTP rejection
methods and their implications.</dd>
</dl></dd>
</dl>
<t><em>Ticket 47</em></t>
<t><em>Ticket 82</em></t>
<dl>
<dt>rf (do not use):</dt>
<dd><t>Format to be used for message-specific failure reports (colon-
separated plain-text list of values; OPTIONAL; default is "afrf").
This tag SHOULD NOT be used in a DMARC record. See the note at the
end for more information. The value of this tag is a list of one or
more report formats as requested by the Domain Owner or PSO to be used when
a message fails both <xref target="RFC7208"></xref> and <xref target="RFC6376"></xref> tests to report
details of the individual failure. The values MUST be present in the
registry of reporting formats defined in <xref target="iana-considerations"></xref>; a
Mail Receiver observing a different value SHOULD ignore it or MAY
ignore the entire DMARC record. For this version, only "afrf" (the
auth-failure report type defined in <xref target="RFC6591"></xref>) is presently
supported. See <xref target="DMARC-Failure-Reporting"></xref> for details. For
interoperability, the Authentication Failure Reporting Format (AFRF)
MUST be supported.</t>
<t>Note: Ever-broadening privacy laws in many governmental
jurisdictions have had the effect of receivers refusing to
send failure reports or at best redacting so much information
from them as to render them mostly useless to the Report Receiver.
As such, it is unlikely that there will ever be formats other
than "afrf" developed for failure reports, and so this tag
should not be used.</t>
</dd>
</dl>
<t><em>Ticket 50</em></t>
<dl>
<dt>ri (do not use):</dt>
<dd><t>Interval requested between aggregate reports (plain-text 32-bit
unsigned integer; OPTIONAL; default is 86400). This tag SHOULD NOT
be used in a DMARC record. See the note at the end for more information.
Indicates a request to Receivers to generate aggregate reports separated
by no more than the requested number of seconds. DMARC implementations
MUST be able to provide daily reports and SHOULD be able to
provide hourly reports when requested. However, anything other
than a daily report is understood to be accommodated on a best-
effort basis.</t>
<t>Note: In March, 2021, a survey of nearly 74,000 DMARC policy records showed
that fewer than 2% were publishing an ri tag with a non-default value, with
most of those set to a value of 3600. There was no evidence that any of these
requests for something more frequent than once daily were being honored.</t>
</dd>
</dl>
<t><em>Ticket 53</em></t>
<dl>
<dt>rua:</dt>
<dd>Addresses to which aggregate feedback is to be sent (comma-
separated plain-text list of DMARC URIs; OPTIONAL). <xref target="DMARC-Aggregate-Reporting"></xref>
discusses considerations that apply when the domain name of a URI differs
from that of the domain advertising the policy.<br />
See <xref target="external-report-addresses"></xref> for additional
considerations. Any valid URI can be specified. A Mail Receiver
MUST implement support for a "mailto:" URI, i.e., the ability to
send a DMARC report via electronic mail. If not provided, Mail
Receivers MUST NOT generate aggregate feedback reports. URIs
not supported by Mail Receivers MUST be ignored. The aggregate
feedback report format is described in the DMARC reporting documents.</dd>
<dt>ruf:</dt>
<dd>Addresses to which message-specific failure information is to
be reported (comma-separated plain-text list of DMARC URIs;
OPTIONAL). If present, the Domain Owner or PSO is requesting Mail
Receivers to send detailed failure reports about messages that
fail the DMARC evaluation in specific ways (see the "fo" tag
above). The format of the message to be generated MUST follow the
format specified for the "rf" tag. <xref target="DMARC-Failure-Reporting"></xref> discusses
considerations that apply when the domain name of a URI differs
from that of the domain advertising the policy. A Mail Receiver
MUST implement support for a "mailto:" URI, i.e., the ability to
send a DMARC report via electronic mail. If not provided, Mail
Receivers MUST NOT generate failure reports. See <xref target="external-report-addresses"></xref> for
additional considerations.</dd>
</dl>
<t><em>Tickets 85 and 108</em></t>
<dl>
<dt>sp:</dt>
<dd>Domain Owner Assessment Policy for all subdomains (plain-text;
OPTIONAL). Indicates the severity of concern the Domain Owner or PSO has
for mail using an existing subdomain of the domain queried but not
passing DMARC validation. It applies only to subdomains of
the domain queried and not to the domain itself. Its syntax is
identical to that of the "p" tag defined above. If both the "sp"
tag is absent and the "np" tag is either absent or not applicable,
the policy specified by the "p" tag MUST be applied for subdomains.
Note that "sp" will be ignored for DMARC records published on
subdomains of Organizational Domains due to the effect of the
DMARC policy discovery mechanism described in <xref target="policy-discovery"></xref>.</dd>
<dt>v:</dt>
<dd>Version (plain-text; REQUIRED). Identifies the record retrieved
as a DMARC record. It MUST have the value of "DMARC1". The value
of this tag MUST match precisely; if it does not or it is absent,
the entire retrieved record MUST be ignored. It MUST be the first
tag in the list.</dd>
</dl>
<t>A DMARC policy record MUST comply with the formal specification found
in <xref target="formal-definition"></xref> in that the "v" tag MUST be present and MUST
appear first. Unknown tags MUST be ignored. Syntax errors
in the remainder of the record SHOULD be discarded in favor of
default values (if any) or ignored outright.</t>
<t>Note that given the rules of the previous paragraph, addition of a
new tag into the registered list of tags does not itself require a
new version of DMARC to be generated (with a corresponding change to
the "v" tag's value), but a change to any existing tags does require
a new version of DMARC.</t>
<t><em>Ticket 109</em>
Question: Does removal of a tag or tags, as proposed through other
tickets, constitute "a change to any existing tags", thus requiring
"a new version of DMARC"?</t>
</section>
<section anchor="formal-definition"><name>Formal Definition</name>
<t>The formal definition of the DMARC format, using <xref target="RFC5234"></xref>, is as
follows:</t>
<t>[FIXTHIS: Reference to [RFC3986] in code block]</t>
<artwork> dmarc-uri = URI [ "!" 1*DIGIT [ "k" / "m" / "g" / "t" ] ]
; "URI" is imported from [RFC3986]; commas (ASCII
; 0x2C) and exclamation points (ASCII 0x21)
; MUST be encoded; the numeric portion MUST fit
; within an unsigned 64-bit integer
_Ticket 7, 47, and 52_
dmarc-record = dmarc-version dmarc-sep *(dmarc-tag dmarc-sep)
dmarc-tag = dmarc-request /
dmarc-srequest /
dmarc-auri /
dmarc-furi /
dmarc-ainterval /
dmarc-fo /
dmarc-rfmt
; components other than dmarc-version and
; dmarc-request may appear in any order
dmarc-version = "v" *WSP "=" *WSP %x44 %x4d %x41 %x52 %x43 %x31
dmarc-sep = *WSP %x3b *WSP
dmarc-request = "p" *WSP "=" *WSP
( "none" / "quarantine" / "reject" )
dmarc-srequest = "sp" *WSP "=" *WSP
( "none" / "quarantine" / "reject" )
dmarc-auri = "rua" *WSP "=" *WSP
dmarc-uri *(*WSP "," *WSP dmarc-uri)
dmarc-furi = "ruf" *WSP "=" *WSP
dmarc-uri *(*WSP "," *WSP dmarc-uri)
_Ticket 52_
dmarc-ainterval = "ri" *WSP "=" *WSP 1*DIGIT
dmarc-fo = "fo" *WSP "=" *WSP
( "0" / "1" / "d" / "s" )
*(*WSP ":" *WSP ( "0" / "1" / "d" / "s" ))
dmarc-rfmt = "rf" *WSP "=" *WSP Keyword *(*WSP ":" Keyword)
; registered reporting formats only
_Ticket 47_
</artwork>
<t>"Keyword" is imported from Section 4.1.2 of <xref target="RFC5321"></xref>.</t>
<t><em>Ticket 53</em></t>
</section>
<section anchor="domain-owner-actions"><name>Domain Owner Actions</name>
<t><em>Tickets 2, 108, and 109</em></t>
<t>This section describes Domain Owner actions to fully implement the
DMARC mechanism.</t>
<section anchor="publish-an-spf-policy-for-an-aligned-domain"><name>Publish an SPF Policy for an Aligned Domain</name>
<t>Because DMARC relies on SPF <xref target="RFC7208"></xref> and DKIM <xref target="RFC6376"></xref>, in
order to take full advantage of DMARC, a Domain Owner SHOULD first
ensure that SPF and DKIM authentication are properly configured.
The easiest first step here is to choose a domain to use as the
RFC5321.From domain (i.e., the Return-Path domain) for its mail,
one that aligns with the Author Domain, and then publish an SPF
policy in DNS for that domain.</t>
</section>
<section anchor="configure-sending-system-for-dkim-signing-using-an-aligned-domain"><name>Configure Sending System for DKIM Signing Using an Aligned Domain</name>
<t>While it is possible to secure a DMARC pass verdict based on only
SPF or DKIM, it is commonly accepted best practice to ensure that
both authentication mechanisms are in place in order to guard
against failure of just one of them. The Domain Owner SHOULD choose
as a DKIM-Signing domain (i.e., the d= domain in the DKIM-Signature
header) that aligns with the Author Domain and configure its system
to sign using that domain.</t>
</section>
<section anchor="setup-a-mailbox-to-receive-aggregate-reports"><name>Setup a Mailbox to Receive Aggregate Reports</name>
<t>Proper consumption and analysis of DMARC aggregate reports is the
key to any successful DMARC deployment for a Domain Owner. DMARC
aggregate reports, which are XML documents and are defined in <xref target="DMARC-Aggregate-Reporting"></xref>,
contain valuable data for the Domain Owner, showing sources of mail using the Author
Domain. Depending on how mature the Domain Owner's DMARC rollout
is, some of these sources could be legitimate ones that were
overlooked during the intial deployment of SPF and/or DKIM.</t>
<t>Because the aggregate reports are XML documents, it is strongly
advised that they be machine-parsed, so setting up a mailbox
involves more than just the physical creation of the mailbox. Many
third-party services exist that will process DMARC aggregate reports,
or the Domain Owner can create its own set of tools. No matter which
method is chosen, the ability to parse these reports and consume
the data contained in them will go a long way to ensuring a
successful deployment.</t>
</section>
<section anchor="publish-a-dmarc-policy-for-the-author-domain"><name>Publish a DMARC Policy for the Author Domain</name>
<t>Once SPF, DKIM, and the aggregate reports mailbox are all in place,
it's time to publish a DMARC record. For best results, Domain Owners
SHOULD start with "p=none", with the rua tag containg the mailbox
created in the previous step.</t>
</section>
<section anchor="collect-and-analyze-reports-and-adjust-authentication"><name>Collect and Analyze Reports and Adjust Authentication</name>
<t>The reason for starting at "p=none" is to ensure that nothing's been
missed in the initial SPF and DKIM deployments. In all but the most
trivial setups, it is possible for a Domain Owner to overlook a
server here or be unaware of a third party sending agreeement there.
Starting at "p=none", therefore, takes advantage of DMARC's aggregate
reporting function, with the Domain Owner using the reports to audit
its own mail streams. Should any overlooked systems be found in the
reports, the Domain Owner can adjust the SPF record and/or configure
DKIM signing for those systems.</t>
</section>
<section anchor="decide-if-and-when-to-update-dmarc-policy"><name>Decide If and When to Update DMARC Policy</name>
<t>Once the Domain Owner is satisfied that it is properly authenticating
all of its mail, then it is time to decide if it is appropriate to
change the p= value in its DMARC record to p=quarantine or p=reject.
Depending on its cadence for sending mail, it may take many months
of consuming DMARC aggregate reports before a Domain Owner reaches
the point where it is sure that it is properly authenticating all
of its mail, and the decision on which p= value to use will depend
on its needs.</t>
</section>
</section>
<section anchor="pso-actions"><name>PSO Actions</name>
<t>In addition to the DMARC Domain Owner actions, PSOs that require use
of DMARC and participate in PSD DMARC ought to make that information
availablle to Mail Receivers. <xref target="DMARC-PSD"></xref> is an experimental
method for doing so, and the experiment is described in Appendix A
of that document.</t>
</section>
<section anchor="mail-receiver-actions"><name>Mail Receiver Actions</name>
<t>This section describes receiver actions in the DMARC environment.</t>
<section anchor="extract-author-domain"><name>Extract Author Domain</name>
<t>The domain in the RFC5322.From header field is extracted as the domain
to be evaluated by DMARC. If the domain is encoded with UTF-8, the
domain name must be converted to an A-label, as described in Section
2.3 of <xref target="RFC5890"></xref>, for further processing.</t>
<t><em>Ticket 107</em></t>
<t>In order to be processed by DMARC, a message typically needs to
contain exactly one RFC5322.From domain (a single From: field with a
single domain in it). Not all messages meet this requirement, and
the handling of those that are forbidden under RFC 5322 <xref target="RFC5322"></xref>
or that contain no meaningful domains is outside the scope of this
document.</t>
<t>The case of a syntactically valid multi-valued RFC5322.From header
field presents a particular challenge. When a single RFC5322.From
header field contains multiple addresses, it is possible that there
may be multiple domains used in those addresses. The process in this
case is to only proceed with DMARC checking if the domain is
identical for all of the addresses in a multi-valued RFC5322.From
header field. Multi-valued RFC5322.From header fields with multiple
domains MUST be exempt from DMARC checking.</t>
<t><em>Ticket 108</em></t>
<t>Note that domain names that appear on a public suffix list are not
exempt from DMARC policy application and reporting.</t>
</section>
<section anchor="determine-handling-policy"><name>Determine Handling Policy</name>
<t>To arrive at a policy for an individual message, Mail Receivers MUST
perform the following actions or their semantic equivalents.
Steps 2-4 MAY be done in parallel, whereas steps 5 and 6 require
input from previous steps.</t>
<t>The steps are as follows:</t>
<ol>
<li><t>Extract the RFC5322.From domain from the message (as above).</t>
</li>
<li><t>Query the DNS for a DMARC policy record. Continue if one is
found, or terminate DMARC evaluation otherwise. See
<xref target="policy-discovery"></xref> for details.</t>
</li>
</ol>
<t><em>Ticket 3</em></t>
<ol start="3">