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Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) D. Crocker, Ed.
Request for Comments: 6376 Brandenburg InternetWorking
Obsoletes: 4871, 5672 T. Hansen, Ed.
Category: Standards Track AT&T Laboratories
ISSN: 2070-1721 M. Kucherawy, Ed.
Cloudmark
September 2011
DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) Signatures
Abstract
DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) permits a person, role, or
organization that owns the signing domain to claim some
responsibility for a message by associating the domain with the
message. This can be an author's organization, an operational relay,
or one of their agents. DKIM separates the question of the identity
of the Signer of the message from the purported author of the
message. Assertion of responsibility is validated through a
cryptographic signature and by querying the Signer's domain directly
to retrieve the appropriate public key. Message transit from author
to recipient is through relays that typically make no substantive
change to the message content and thus preserve the DKIM signature.
This memo obsoletes RFC 4871 and RFC 5672.
Status of This Memo
This is an Internet Standards Track document.
This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force
(IETF). It represents the consensus of the IETF community. It has
received public review and has been approved for publication by the
Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Further information on
Internet Standards is available in Section 2 of RFC 5741.
Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6376.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2011 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
Crocker, et al. Standards Track [Page 1]
RFC 6376 DKIM Signatures September 2011
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
publication of this document. Please review these documents
carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must
include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.
This document may contain material from IETF Documents or IETF
Contributions published or made publicly available before November
10, 2008. The person(s) controlling the copyright in some of this
material may not have granted the IETF Trust the right to allow
modifications of such material outside the IETF Standards Process.
Without obtaining an adequate license from the person(s) controlling
the copyright in such materials, this document may not be modified
outside the IETF Standards Process, and derivative works of it may
not be created outside the IETF Standards Process, except to format
it for publication as an RFC or to translate it into languages other
than English.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.1. DKIM Architecture Documents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.2. Signing Identity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.3. Scalability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.4. Simple Key Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.5. Data Integrity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2. Terminology and Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.1. Signers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.2. Verifiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.3. Identity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.4. Identifier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.5. Signing Domain Identifier (SDID) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.6. Agent or User Identifier (AUID) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.7. Identity Assessor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.8. Whitespace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.9. Imported ABNF Tokens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.10. Common ABNF Tokens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.11. DKIM-Quoted-Printable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
3. Protocol Elements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3.1. Selectors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3.2. Tag=Value Lists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
3.3. Signing and Verification Algorithms . . . . . . . . . . . 13
3.4. Canonicalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
3.5. The DKIM-Signature Header Field . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
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3.6. Key Management and Representation . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
3.7. Computing the Message Hashes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
3.8. Input Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
3.9. Output Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
3.10. Signing by Parent Domains . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
3.11. Relationship between SDID and AUID . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
4. Semantics of Multiple Signatures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
4.1. Example Scenarios . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
4.2. Interpretation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
5. Signer Actions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
5.1. Determine Whether the Email Should Be Signed and by
Whom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
5.2. Select a Private Key and Corresponding Selector
Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
5.3. Normalize the Message to Prevent Transport Conversions . . 37
5.4. Determine the Header Fields to Sign . . . . . . . . . . . 38
5.5. Compute the Message Hash and Signature . . . . . . . . . . 43
5.6. Insert the DKIM-Signature Header Field . . . . . . . . . . 43
6. Verifier Actions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
6.1. Extract Signatures from the Message . . . . . . . . . . . 44
6.2. Communicate Verification Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
6.3. Interpret Results/Apply Local Policy . . . . . . . . . . . 50
7. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
7.1. Email Authentication Methods Registry . . . . . . . . . . 51
7.2. DKIM-Signature Tag Specifications . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
7.3. DKIM-Signature Query Method Registry . . . . . . . . . . . 52
7.4. DKIM-Signature Canonicalization Registry . . . . . . . . . 52
7.5. _domainkey DNS TXT Resource Record Tag Specifications . . 53
7.6. DKIM Key Type Registry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
7.7. DKIM Hash Algorithms Registry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
7.8. DKIM Service Types Registry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
7.9. DKIM Selector Flags Registry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
7.10. DKIM-Signature Header Field . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
8. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
8.1. ASCII Art Attacks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
8.2. Misuse of Body Length Limits ("l=" Tag) . . . . . . . . . 55
8.3. Misappropriated Private Key . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
8.4. Key Server Denial-of-Service Attacks . . . . . . . . . . . 56
8.5. Attacks against the DNS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
8.6. Replay/Spam Attacks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
8.7. Limits on Revoking Keys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
8.8. Intentionally Malformed Key Records . . . . . . . . . . . 58
8.9. Intentionally Malformed DKIM-Signature Header Fields . . . 58
8.10. Information Leakage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
8.11. Remote Timing Attacks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
8.12. Reordered Header Fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
8.13. RSA Attacks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
8.14. Inappropriate Signing by Parent Domains . . . . . . . . . 59
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8.15. Attacks Involving Extra Header Fields . . . . . . . . . . 60
9. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
9.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
9.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
Appendix A. Example of Use (INFORMATIVE) . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
A.1. The User Composes an Email . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
A.2. The Email is Signed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
A.3. The Email Signature is Verified . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
Appendix B. Usage Examples (INFORMATIVE) . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
B.1. Alternate Submission Scenarios . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
B.2. Alternate Delivery Scenarios . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
Appendix C. Creating a Public Key (INFORMATIVE) . . . . . . . . . 71
C.1. Compatibility with DomainKeys Key Records . . . . . . . . 72
C.2. RFC 4871 Compatibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
Appendix D. MUA Considerations (INFORMATIVE) . . . . . . . . . . 73
Appendix E. Changes since RFC 4871 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
Appendix F. Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
1. Introduction
DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) permits a person, role, or
organization to claim some responsibility for a message by
associating a domain name [RFC1034] with the message [RFC5322], which
they are authorized to use. This can be an author's organization, an
operational relay, or one of their agents. Assertion of
responsibility is validated through a cryptographic signature and by
querying the Signer's domain directly to retrieve the appropriate
public key. Message transit from author to recipient is through
relays that typically make no substantive change to the message
content and thus preserve the DKIM signature. A message can contain
multiple signatures, from the same or different organizations
involved with the message.
The approach taken by DKIM differs from previous approaches to
message signing (e.g., Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions
(S/MIME) [RFC5751], OpenPGP [RFC4880]) in that:
o the message signature is written as a message header field so that
neither human recipients nor existing MUA (Mail User Agent)
software is confused by signature-related content appearing in the
message body;
o there is no dependency on public- and private-key pairs being
issued by well-known, trusted certificate authorities;
o there is no dependency on the deployment of any new Internet
protocols or services for public-key distribution or revocation;
Crocker, et al. Standards Track [Page 4]
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o signature verification failure does not force rejection of the
message;
o no attempt is made to include encryption as part of the mechanism;
and
o message archiving is not a design goal.
DKIM:
o is compatible with the existing email infrastructure and
transparent to the fullest extent possible;
o requires minimal new infrastructure;
o can be implemented independently of clients in order to reduce
deployment time;
o can be deployed incrementally; and
o allows delegation of signing to third parties.
1.1. DKIM Architecture Documents
Readers are advised to be familiar with the material in [RFC4686],
[RFC5585], and [RFC5863], which provide the background for the
development of DKIM, an overview of the service, and deployment and
operations guidance and advice, respectively.
1.2. Signing Identity
DKIM separates the question of the identity of the Signer of the
message from the purported author of the message. In particular, a
signature includes the identity of the Signer. Verifiers can use the
signing information to decide how they want to process the message.
The signing identity is included as part of the signature header
field.
INFORMATIVE RATIONALE: The signing identity specified by a DKIM
signature is not required to match an address in any particular
header field because of the broad methods of interpretation by
recipient mail systems, including MUAs.
1.3. Scalability
DKIM is designed to support the extreme scalability requirements that
characterize the email identification problem. There are many
millions of domains and a much larger number of individual addresses.
Crocker, et al. Standards Track [Page 5]
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DKIM seeks to preserve the positive aspects of the current email
infrastructure, such as the ability for anyone to communicate with
anyone else without introduction.
1.4. Simple Key Management
DKIM differs from traditional hierarchical public-key systems in that
no certificate authority infrastructure is required; the Verifier
requests the public key from a repository in the domain of the
claimed Signer directly rather than from a third party.
The DNS is proposed as the initial mechanism for the public keys.
Thus, DKIM currently depends on DNS administration and the security
of the DNS system. DKIM is designed to be extensible to other key
fetching services as they become available.
1.5. Data Integrity
A DKIM signature associates the "d=" name with the computed hash of
some or all of the message (see Section 3.7) in order to prevent the
reuse of the signature with different messages. Verifying the
signature asserts that the hashed content has not changed since it
was signed and asserts nothing else about "protecting" the end-to-end
integrity of the message.
2. Terminology and Definitions
This section defines terms used in the rest of the document.
DKIM is designed to operate within the Internet Mail service, as
defined in [RFC5598]. Basic email terminology is taken from that
specification.
Syntax descriptions use Augmented BNF (ABNF) [RFC5234].
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
[RFC2119]. These words take their normative meanings only when they
are presented in ALL UPPERCASE.
2.1. Signers
Elements in the mail system that sign messages on behalf of a domain
are referred to as Signers. These may be MUAs (Mail User Agents),
MSAs (Mail Submission Agents), MTAs (Mail Transfer Agents), or other
agents such as mailing list exploders. In general, any Signer will
Crocker, et al. Standards Track [Page 6]
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be involved in the injection of a message into the message system in
some way. The key issue is that a message must be signed before it
leaves the administrative domain of the Signer.
2.2. Verifiers
Elements in the mail system that verify signatures are referred to as
Verifiers. These may be MTAs, Mail Delivery Agents (MDAs), or MUAs.
In most cases, it is expected that Verifiers will be close to an end
user (reader) of the message or some consuming agent such as a
mailing list exploder.
2.3. Identity
A person, role, or organization. In the context of DKIM, examples
include the author, the author's organization, an ISP along the
handling path, an independent trust assessment service, and a mailing
list operator.
2.4. Identifier
A label that refers to an identity.
2.5. Signing Domain Identifier (SDID)
A single domain name that is the mandatory payload output of DKIM and
that refers to the identity claiming some responsibility for the
message by signing it. It is specified in Section 3.5.
2.6. Agent or User Identifier (AUID)
A single identifier that refers to the agent or user on behalf of
whom the Signing Domain Identifier (SDID) has taken responsibility.
The AUID comprises a domain name and an optional <local-part>. The
domain name is the same as that used for the SDID or is a subdomain
of it. For DKIM processing, the domain name portion of the AUID has
only basic domain name semantics; any possible owner-specific
semantics are outside the scope of DKIM. It is specified in
Section 3.5.
Note that acceptable values for the AUID may be constrained via a
flag in the public-key record. (See Section 3.6.1.)
2.7. Identity Assessor
An element in the mail system that consumes DKIM's payload, which is
the responsible Signing Domain Identifier (SDID). The Identity
Assessor is dedicated to the assessment of the delivered identifier.
Crocker, et al. Standards Track [Page 7]
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Other DKIM (and non-DKIM) values can also be used by the Identity
Assessor (if they are available) to provide a more general message
evaluation filtering engine. However, this additional activity is
outside the scope of this specification.
2.8. Whitespace
There are three forms of whitespace:
o WSP represents simple whitespace, i.e., a space or a tab character
(formal definition in [RFC5234]).
o LWSP is linear whitespace, defined as WSP plus CRLF (formal
definition in [RFC5234]).
o FWS is folding whitespace. It allows multiple lines separated by
CRLF followed by at least one whitespace, to be joined.
The formal ABNF for these are (WSP and LWSP are given for information
only):
WSP = SP / HTAB
LWSP = *(WSP / CRLF WSP)
FWS = [*WSP CRLF] 1*WSP
The definition of FWS is identical to that in [RFC5322] except for
the exclusion of obs-FWS.
2.9. Imported ABNF Tokens
The following tokens are imported from other RFCs as noted. Those
RFCs should be considered definitive.
The following tokens are imported from [RFC5321]:
o "local-part" (implementation warning: this permits quoted strings)
o "sub-domain"
The following tokens are imported from [RFC5322]:
o "field-name" (name of a header field)
o "dot-atom-text" (in the local-part of an email address)
The following tokens are imported from [RFC2045]:
o "qp-section" (a single line of quoted-printable-encoded text)
Crocker, et al. Standards Track [Page 8]
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o "hex-octet" (a quoted-printable encoded octet)
INFORMATIVE NOTE: Be aware that the ABNF in [RFC2045] does not
obey the rules of [RFC5234] and must be interpreted accordingly,
particularly as regards case folding.
Other tokens not defined herein are imported from [RFC5234]. These
are intuitive primitives such as SP, HTAB, WSP, ALPHA, DIGIT, CRLF,
etc.
2.10. Common ABNF Tokens
The following ABNF tokens are used elsewhere in this document:
hyphenated-word = ALPHA [ *(ALPHA / DIGIT / "-") (ALPHA / DIGIT) ]
ALPHADIGITPS = (ALPHA / DIGIT / "+" / "/")
base64string = ALPHADIGITPS *([FWS] ALPHADIGITPS)
[ [FWS] "=" [ [FWS] "=" ] ]
hdr-name = field-name
qp-hdr-value = dkim-quoted-printable ; with "|" encoded
2.11. DKIM-Quoted-Printable
The DKIM-Quoted-Printable encoding syntax resembles that described in
Quoted-Printable [RFC2045], Section 6.7: any character MAY be encoded
as an "=" followed by two hexadecimal digits from the alphabet
"0123456789ABCDEF" (no lowercase characters permitted) representing
the hexadecimal-encoded integer value of that character. All control
characters (those with values < %x20), 8-bit characters (values >
%x7F), and the characters DEL (%x7F), SPACE (%x20), and semicolon
(";", %x3B) MUST be encoded. Note that all whitespace, including
SPACE, CR, and LF characters, MUST be encoded. After encoding, FWS
MAY be added at arbitrary locations in order to avoid excessively
long lines; such whitespace is NOT part of the value, and MUST be
removed before decoding. Use of characters not listed as "mail-safe"
in [RFC2049] is NOT RECOMMENDED.
ABNF:
dkim-quoted-printable = *(FWS / hex-octet / dkim-safe-char)
; hex-octet is from RFC2045
dkim-safe-char = %x21-3A / %x3C / %x3E-7E
; '!' - ':', '<', '>' - '~'
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INFORMATIVE NOTE: DKIM-Quoted-Printable differs from Quoted-
Printable as defined in [RFC2045] in several important ways:
1. Whitespace in the input text, including CR and LF, must be
encoded. [RFC2045] does not require such encoding, and does
not permit encoding of CR or LF characters that are part of a
CRLF line break.
2. Whitespace in the encoded text is ignored. This is to allow
tags encoded using DKIM-Quoted-Printable to be wrapped as
needed. In particular, [RFC2045] requires that line breaks in
the input be represented as physical line breaks; that is not
the case here.
3. The "soft line break" syntax ("=" as the last non-whitespace
character on the line) does not apply.
4. DKIM-Quoted-Printable does not require that encoded lines be
no more than 76 characters long (although there may be other
requirements depending on the context in which the encoded
text is being used).
3. Protocol Elements
Protocol Elements are conceptual parts of the protocol that are not
specific to either Signers or Verifiers. The protocol descriptions
for Signers and Verifiers are described in later sections ("Signer
Actions" (Section 5) and "Verifier Actions" (Section 6)). NOTE: This
section must be read in the context of those sections.
3.1. Selectors
To support multiple concurrent public keys per signing domain, the
key namespace is subdivided using "selectors". For example,
selectors might indicate the names of office locations (e.g.,
"sanfrancisco", "coolumbeach", and "reykjavik"), the signing date
(e.g., "january2005", "february2005", etc.), or even an individual
user.
Selectors are needed to support some important use cases. For
example:
o Domains that want to delegate signing capability for a specific
address for a given duration to a partner, such as an advertising
provider or other outsourced function.
o Domains that want to allow frequent travelers to send messages
locally without the need to connect with a particular MSA.
Crocker, et al. Standards Track [Page 10]
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o "Affinity" domains (e.g., college alumni associations) that
provide forwarding of incoming mail, but that do not operate a
mail submission agent for outgoing mail.
Periods are allowed in selectors and are component separators. When
keys are retrieved from the DNS, periods in selectors define DNS
label boundaries in a manner similar to the conventional use in
domain names. Selector components might be used to combine dates
with locations, for example, "march2005.reykjavik". In a DNS
implementation, this can be used to allow delegation of a portion of
the selector namespace.
ABNF:
selector = sub-domain *( "." sub-domain )
The number of public keys and corresponding selectors for each domain
is determined by the domain owner. Many domain owners will be
satisfied with just one selector, whereas administratively
distributed organizations can choose to manage disparate selectors
and key pairs in different regions or on different email servers.
Beyond administrative convenience, selectors make it possible to
seamlessly replace public keys on a routine basis. If a domain
wishes to change from using a public key associated with selector
"january2005" to a public key associated with selector
"february2005", it merely makes sure that both public keys are
advertised in the public-key repository concurrently for the
transition period during which email may be in transit prior to
verification. At the start of the transition period, the outbound
email servers are configured to sign with the "february2005" private
key. At the end of the transition period, the "january2005" public
key is removed from the public-key repository.
INFORMATIVE NOTE: A key may also be revoked as described below.
The distinction between revoking and removing a key selector
record is subtle. When phasing out keys as described above, a
signing domain would probably simply remove the key record after
the transition period. However, a signing domain could elect to
revoke the key (but maintain the key record) for a further period.
There is no defined semantic difference between a revoked key and
a removed key.
While some domains may wish to make selector values well-known,
others will want to take care not to allocate selector names in a way
that allows harvesting of data by outside parties. For example, if
per-user keys are issued, the domain owner will need to decide
Crocker, et al. Standards Track [Page 11]
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whether to associate this selector directly with the name of a
registered end user or make it some unassociated random value, such
as a fingerprint of the public key.
INFORMATIVE OPERATIONS NOTE: Reusing a selector with a new key
(for example, changing the key associated with a user's name)
makes it impossible to tell the difference between a message that
didn't verify because the key is no longer valid and a message
that is actually forged. For this reason, Signers are ill-advised
to reuse selectors for new keys. A better strategy is to assign
new keys to new selectors.
3.2. Tag=Value Lists
DKIM uses a simple "tag=value" syntax in several contexts, including
in messages and domain signature records.
Values are a series of strings containing either plain text, "base64"
text (as defined in [RFC2045], Section 6.8), "qp-section" (ibid,
Section 6.7), or "dkim-quoted-printable" (as defined in
Section 2.11). The name of the tag will determine the encoding of
each value. Unencoded semicolon (";") characters MUST NOT occur in
the tag value, since that separates tag-specs.
INFORMATIVE IMPLEMENTATION NOTE: Although the "plain text" defined
below (as "tag-value") only includes 7-bit characters, an
implementation that wished to anticipate future standards would be
advised not to preclude the use of UTF-8-encoded ([RFC3629]) text
in tag=value lists.
Formally, the ABNF syntax rules are as follows:
tag-list = tag-spec *( ";" tag-spec ) [ ";" ]
tag-spec = [FWS] tag-name [FWS] "=" [FWS] tag-value [FWS]
tag-name = ALPHA *ALNUMPUNC
tag-value = [ tval *( 1*(WSP / FWS) tval ) ]
; Prohibits WSP and FWS at beginning and end
tval = 1*VALCHAR
VALCHAR = %x21-3A / %x3C-7E
; EXCLAMATION to TILDE except SEMICOLON
ALNUMPUNC = ALPHA / DIGIT / "_"
Note that WSP is allowed anywhere around tags. In particular, any
WSP after the "=" and any WSP before the terminating ";" is not part
of the value; however, WSP inside the value is significant.
Crocker, et al. Standards Track [Page 12]
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Tags MUST be interpreted in a case-sensitive manner. Values MUST be
processed as case sensitive unless the specific tag description of
semantics specifies case insensitivity.
Tags with duplicate names MUST NOT occur within a single tag-list; if
a tag name does occur more than once, the entire tag-list is invalid.
Whitespace within a value MUST be retained unless explicitly excluded
by the specific tag description.
Tag=value pairs that represent the default value MAY be included to
aid legibility.
Unrecognized tags MUST be ignored.
Tags that have an empty value are not the same as omitted tags. An
omitted tag is treated as having the default value; a tag with an
empty value explicitly designates the empty string as the value.
3.3. Signing and Verification Algorithms
DKIM supports multiple digital signature algorithms. Two algorithms
are defined by this specification at this time: rsa-sha1 and rsa-
sha256. Signers MUST implement and SHOULD sign using rsa-sha256.
Verifiers MUST implement both rsa-sha1 and rsa-sha256.
INFORMATIVE NOTE: Although rsa-sha256 is strongly encouraged, some
senders might prefer to use rsa-sha1 when balancing security
strength against performance, complexity, or other needs. In
general, however, rsa-sha256 should always be used whenever
possible.
3.3.1. The rsa-sha1 Signing Algorithm
The rsa-sha1 Signing Algorithm computes a message hash as described
in Section 3.7 using SHA-1 [FIPS-180-3-2008] as the hash-alg. That
hash is then signed by the Signer using the RSA algorithm (defined in
Public-Key Cryptography Standards (PKCS) #1 version 1.5 [RFC3447]) as
the crypt-alg and the Signer's private key. The hash MUST NOT be
truncated or converted into any form other than the native binary
form before being signed. The signing algorithm SHOULD use a public
exponent of 65537.
3.3.2. The rsa-sha256 Signing Algorithm
The rsa-sha256 Signing Algorithm computes a message hash as described
in Section 3.7 using SHA-256 [FIPS-180-3-2008] as the hash-alg. That
hash is then signed by the Signer using the RSA algorithm (defined in
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PKCS#1 version 1.5 [RFC3447]) as the crypt-alg and the Signer's
private key. The hash MUST NOT be truncated or converted into any
form other than the native binary form before being signed. The
signing algorithm SHOULD use a public exponent of 65537.
3.3.3. Key Sizes
Selecting appropriate key sizes is a trade-off between cost,
performance, and risk. Since short RSA keys more easily succumb to
off-line attacks, Signers MUST use RSA keys of at least 1024 bits for
long-lived keys. Verifiers MUST be able to validate signatures with
keys ranging from 512 bits to 2048 bits, and they MAY be able to
validate signatures with larger keys. Verifier policies may use the
length of the signing key as one metric for determining whether a
signature is acceptable.
Factors that should influence the key size choice include the
following:
o The practical constraint that large (e.g., 4096-bit) keys might
not fit within a 512-byte DNS UDP response packet
o The security constraint that keys smaller than 1024 bits are
subject to off-line attacks
o Larger keys impose higher CPU costs to verify and sign email
o Keys can be replaced on a regular basis; thus, their lifetime can
be relatively short
o The security goals of this specification are modest compared to
typical goals of other systems that employ digital signatures
See [RFC3766] for further discussion on selecting key sizes.
3.3.4. Other Algorithms
Other algorithms MAY be defined in the future. Verifiers MUST ignore
any signatures using algorithms that they do not implement.
3.4. Canonicalization
Some mail systems modify email in transit, potentially invalidating a
signature. For most Signers, mild modification of email is
immaterial to validation of the DKIM domain name's use. For such
Signers, a canonicalization algorithm that survives modest in-transit
modification is preferred.
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Other Signers demand that any modification of the email, however
minor, result in a signature verification failure. These Signers
prefer a canonicalization algorithm that does not tolerate in-transit
modification of the signed email.
Some Signers may be willing to accept modifications to header fields
that are within the bounds of email standards such as [RFC5322], but
are unwilling to accept any modification to the body of messages.
To satisfy all requirements, two canonicalization algorithms are
defined for each of the header and the body: a "simple" algorithm
that tolerates almost no modification and a "relaxed" algorithm that
tolerates common modifications such as whitespace replacement and
header field line rewrapping. A Signer MAY specify either algorithm
for header or body when signing an email. If no canonicalization
algorithm is specified by the Signer, the "simple" algorithm defaults
for both header and body. Verifiers MUST implement both
canonicalization algorithms. Note that the header and body may use
different canonicalization algorithms. Further canonicalization
algorithms MAY be defined in the future; Verifiers MUST ignore any
signatures that use unrecognized canonicalization algorithms.
Canonicalization simply prepares the email for presentation to the
signing or verification algorithm. It MUST NOT change the
transmitted data in any way. Canonicalization of header fields and
body are described below.
NOTE: This section assumes that the message is already in "network
normal" format (text is ASCII encoded, lines are separated with CRLF
characters, etc.). See also Section 5.3 for information about
normalizing the message.
3.4.1. The "simple" Header Canonicalization Algorithm
The "simple" header canonicalization algorithm does not change header
fields in any way. Header fields MUST be presented to the signing or
verification algorithm exactly as they are in the message being
signed or verified. In particular, header field names MUST NOT be
case folded and whitespace MUST NOT be changed.
3.4.2. The "relaxed" Header Canonicalization Algorithm
The "relaxed" header canonicalization algorithm MUST apply the
following steps in order:
o Convert all header field names (not the header field values) to
lowercase. For example, convert "SUBJect: AbC" to "subject: AbC".
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o Unfold all header field continuation lines as described in
[RFC5322]; in particular, lines with terminators embedded in
continued header field values (that is, CRLF sequences followed by
WSP) MUST be interpreted without the CRLF. Implementations MUST
NOT remove the CRLF at the end of the header field value.
o Convert all sequences of one or more WSP characters to a single SP
character. WSP characters here include those before and after a
line folding boundary.
o Delete all WSP characters at the end of each unfolded header field
value.
o Delete any WSP characters remaining before and after the colon
separating the header field name from the header field value. The
colon separator MUST be retained.
3.4.3. The "simple" Body Canonicalization Algorithm
The "simple" body canonicalization algorithm ignores all empty lines
at the end of the message body. An empty line is a line of zero
length after removal of the line terminator. If there is no body or
no trailing CRLF on the message body, a CRLF is added. It makes no
other changes to the message body. In more formal terms, the
"simple" body canonicalization algorithm converts "*CRLF" at the end
of the body to a single "CRLF".
Note that a completely empty or missing body is canonicalized as a
single "CRLF"; that is, the canonicalized length will be 2 octets.
The SHA-1 value (in base64) for an empty body (canonicalized to a
"CRLF") is:
uoq1oCgLlTqpdDX/iUbLy7J1Wic=
The SHA-256 value is:
frcCV1k9oG9oKj3dpUqdJg1PxRT2RSN/XKdLCPjaYaY=
3.4.4. The "relaxed" Body Canonicalization Algorithm
The "relaxed" body canonicalization algorithm MUST apply the
following steps (a) and (b) in order:
a. Reduce whitespace:
* Ignore all whitespace at the end of lines. Implementations
MUST NOT remove the CRLF at the end of the line.
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* Reduce all sequences of WSP within a line to a single SP
character.
b. Ignore all empty lines at the end of the message body. "Empty
line" is defined in Section 3.4.3. If the body is non-empty but
does not end with a CRLF, a CRLF is added. (For email, this is
only possible when using extensions to SMTP or non-SMTP transport
mechanisms.)
The SHA-1 value (in base64) for an empty body (canonicalized to a
null input) is:
2jmj7l5rSw0yVb/vlWAYkK/YBwk=
The SHA-256 value is:
47DEQpj8HBSa+/TImW+5JCeuQeRkm5NMpJWZG3hSuFU=
3.4.5. Canonicalization Examples (INFORMATIVE)
In the following examples, actual whitespace is used only for
clarity. The actual input and output text is designated using
bracketed descriptors: "<SP>" for a space character, "<HTAB>" for a
tab character, and "<CRLF>" for a carriage-return/line-feed sequence.
For example, "X <SP> Y" and "X<SP>Y" represent the same three
characters.
Example 1: A message reading:
A: <SP> X <CRLF>
B <SP> : <SP> Y <HTAB><CRLF>
<HTAB> Z <SP><SP><CRLF>
<CRLF>
<SP> C <SP><CRLF>
D <SP><HTAB><SP> E <CRLF>
<CRLF>
<CRLF>
when canonicalized using relaxed canonicalization for both header and
body results in a header reading:
a:X <CRLF>
b:Y <SP> Z <CRLF>
and a body reading:
<SP> C <CRLF>
D <SP> E <CRLF>
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Example 2: The same message canonicalized using simple
canonicalization for both header and body results in a header
reading:
A: <SP> X <CRLF>
B <SP> : <SP> Y <HTAB><CRLF>
<HTAB> Z <SP><SP><CRLF>
and a body reading:
<SP> C <SP><CRLF>
D <SP><HTAB><SP> E <CRLF>
Example 3: When processed using relaxed header canonicalization and
simple body canonicalization, the canonicalized version has a header
of:
a:X <CRLF>
b:Y <SP> Z <CRLF>
and a body reading:
<SP> C <SP><CRLF>
D <SP><HTAB><SP> E <CRLF>
3.5. The DKIM-Signature Header Field
The signature of the email is stored in the DKIM-Signature header
field. This header field contains all of the signature and key-
fetching data. The DKIM-Signature value is a tag-list as described
in Section 3.2.
The DKIM-Signature header field SHOULD be treated as though it were a
trace header field as defined in Section 3.6 of [RFC5322] and hence
SHOULD NOT be reordered and SHOULD be prepended to the message.
The DKIM-Signature header field being created or verified is always
included in the signature calculation, after the rest of the header
fields being signed; however, when calculating or verifying the
signature, the value of the "b=" tag (signature value) of that DKIM-
Signature header field MUST be treated as though it were an empty
string. Unknown tags in the DKIM-Signature header field MUST be
included in the signature calculation but MUST be otherwise ignored
by Verifiers. Other DKIM-Signature header fields that are included
in the signature should be treated as normal header fields; in
particular, the "b=" tag is not treated specially.
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The encodings for each field type are listed below. Tags described
as qp-section are encoded as described in Section 6.7 of MIME Part
One [RFC2045], with the additional conversion of semicolon characters
to "=3B"; intuitively, this is one line of quoted-printable encoded
text. The dkim-quoted-printable syntax is defined in Section 2.11.
Tags on the DKIM-Signature header field along with their type and
requirement status are shown below. Unrecognized tags MUST be
ignored.
v= Version (plain-text; REQUIRED). This tag defines the version of
this specification that applies to the signature record. It MUST
have the value "1" for implementations compliant with this version
of DKIM.
ABNF:
sig-v-tag = %x76 [FWS] "=" [FWS] 1*DIGIT
INFORMATIVE NOTE: DKIM-Signature version numbers may increase
arithmetically as new versions of this specification are
released.
a= The algorithm used to generate the signature (plain-text;
REQUIRED). Verifiers MUST support "rsa-sha1" and "rsa-sha256";
Signers SHOULD sign using "rsa-sha256". See Section 3.3 for a
description of the algorithms.
ABNF:
sig-a-tag = %x61 [FWS] "=" [FWS] sig-a-tag-alg
sig-a-tag-alg = sig-a-tag-k "-" sig-a-tag-h
sig-a-tag-k = "rsa" / x-sig-a-tag-k
sig-a-tag-h = "sha1" / "sha256" / x-sig-a-tag-h
x-sig-a-tag-k = ALPHA *(ALPHA / DIGIT)
; for later extension
x-sig-a-tag-h = ALPHA *(ALPHA / DIGIT)
; for later extension
b= The signature data (base64; REQUIRED). Whitespace is ignored in
this value and MUST be ignored when reassembling the original
signature. In particular, the signing process can safely insert
FWS in this value in arbitrary places to conform to line-length
limits. See "Signer Actions" (Section 5) for how the signature is
computed.
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ABNF:
sig-b-tag = %x62 [FWS] "=" [FWS] sig-b-tag-data
sig-b-tag-data = base64string
bh= The hash of the canonicalized body part of the message as
limited by the "l=" tag (base64; REQUIRED). Whitespace is ignored
in this value and MUST be ignored when reassembling the original
signature. In particular, the signing process can safely insert
FWS in this value in arbitrary places to conform to line-length
limits. See Section 3.7 for how the body hash is computed.
ABNF:
sig-bh-tag = %x62 %x68 [FWS] "=" [FWS] sig-bh-tag-data
sig-bh-tag-data = base64string
c= Message canonicalization (plain-text; OPTIONAL, default is
"simple/simple"). This tag informs the Verifier of the type of
canonicalization used to prepare the message for signing. It
consists of two names separated by a "slash" (%d47) character,
corresponding to the header and body canonicalization algorithms,
respectively. These algorithms are described in Section 3.4. If
only one algorithm is named, that algorithm is used for the header
and "simple" is used for the body. For example, "c=relaxed" is
treated the same as "c=relaxed/simple".
ABNF:
sig-c-tag = %x63 [FWS] "=" [FWS] sig-c-tag-alg
["/" sig-c-tag-alg]
sig-c-tag-alg = "simple" / "relaxed" / x-sig-c-tag-alg
x-sig-c-tag-alg = hyphenated-word ; for later extension
d= The SDID claiming responsibility for an introduction of a message
into the mail stream (plain-text; REQUIRED). Hence, the SDID
value is used to form the query for the public key. The SDID MUST
correspond to a valid DNS name under which the DKIM key record is
published. The conventions and semantics used by a Signer to
create and use a specific SDID are outside the scope of this
specification, as is any use of those conventions and semantics.
When presented with a signature that does not meet these
requirements, Verifiers MUST consider the signature invalid.
Internationalized domain names MUST be encoded as A-labels, as
described in Section 2.3 of [RFC5890].
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ABNF:
sig-d-tag = %x64 [FWS] "=" [FWS] domain-name
domain-name = sub-domain 1*("." sub-domain)
; from [RFC5321] Domain,
; excluding address-literal
h= Signed header fields (plain-text, but see description; REQUIRED).
A colon-separated list of header field names that identify the
header fields presented to the signing algorithm. The field MUST
contain the complete list of header fields in the order presented
to the signing algorithm. The field MAY contain names of header
fields that do not exist when signed; nonexistent header fields do
not contribute to the signature computation (that is, they are
treated as the null input, including the header field name, the
separating colon, the header field value, and any CRLF
terminator). The field MAY contain multiple instances of a header
field name, meaning multiple occurrences of the corresponding
header field are included in the header hash. The field MUST NOT
include the DKIM-Signature header field that is being created or
verified but may include others. Folding whitespace (FWS) MAY be
included on either side of the colon separator. Header field
names MUST be compared against actual header field names in a
case-insensitive manner. This list MUST NOT be empty. See
Section 5.4 for a discussion of choosing header fields to sign and
Section 5.4.2 for requirements when signing multiple instances of
a single field.
ABNF:
sig-h-tag = %x68 [FWS] "=" [FWS] hdr-name
*( [FWS] ":" [FWS] hdr-name )
INFORMATIVE EXPLANATION: By "signing" header fields that do not
actually exist, a Signer can allow a Verifier to detect
insertion of those header fields after signing. However, since
a Signer cannot possibly know what header fields might be
defined in the future, this mechanism cannot be used to prevent
the addition of any possible unknown header fields.
INFORMATIVE NOTE: "Signing" fields that are not present at the
time of signing not only prevents fields and values from being
added but also prevents adding fields with no values.
i= The Agent or User Identifier (AUID) on behalf of which the SDID is
taking responsibility (dkim-quoted-printable; OPTIONAL, default is
an empty local-part followed by an "@" followed by the domain from
the "d=" tag).
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The syntax is a standard email address where the local-part MAY be
omitted. The domain part of the address MUST be the same as, or a
subdomain of, the value of the "d=" tag.
Internationalized domain names MUST be encoded as A-labels, as
described in Section 2.3 of [RFC5890].
ABNF:
sig-i-tag = %x69 [FWS] "=" [FWS] [ Local-part ]
"@" domain-name
The AUID is specified as having the same syntax as an email
address but it need not have the same semantics. Notably, the
domain name need not be registered in the DNS -- so it might not
resolve in a query -- and the local-part MAY be drawn from a
namespace unrelated to any mailbox. The details of the structure
and semantics for the namespace are determined by the Signer. Any
knowledge or use of those details by Verifiers or Assessors is
outside the scope of this specification. The Signer MAY choose to
use the same namespace for its AUIDs as its users' email addresses
or MAY choose other means of representing its users. However, the
Signer SHOULD use the same AUID for each message intended to be
evaluated as being within the same sphere of responsibility, if it
wishes to offer receivers the option of using the AUID as a stable
identifier that is finer grained than the SDID.
INFORMATIVE NOTE: The local-part of the "i=" tag is optional
because in some cases a Signer may not be able to establish a
verified individual identity. In such cases, the Signer might
wish to assert that although it is willing to go as far as
signing for the domain, it is unable or unwilling to commit to
an individual user name within the domain. It can do so by
including the domain part but not the local-part of the
identity.
INFORMATIVE DISCUSSION: This specification does not require the
value of the "i=" tag to match the identity in any message
header fields. This is considered to be a Verifier policy
issue. Constraints between the value of the "i=" tag and other
identities in other header fields seek to apply basic
authentication into the semantics of trust associated with a
role such as content author. Trust is a broad and complex
topic, and trust mechanisms are subject to highly creative
attacks. The real-world efficacy of any but the most basic
bindings between the "i=" value and other identities is not
well established, nor is its vulnerability to subversion by an
attacker. Hence, reliance on the use of these options should
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be strictly limited. In particular, it is not at all clear to
what extent a typical end-user recipient can rely on any
assurances that might be made by successful use of the "i="
options.
l= Body length count (plain-text unsigned decimal integer; OPTIONAL,
default is entire body). This tag informs the Verifier of the
number of octets in the body of the email after canonicalization
included in the cryptographic hash, starting from 0 immediately
following the CRLF preceding the body. This value MUST NOT be
larger than the actual number of octets in the canonicalized
message body. See further discussion in Section 8.2.
INFORMATIVE NOTE: The value of the "l=" tag is constrained to
76 decimal digits. This constraint is not intended to predict
the size of future messages or to require implementations to
use an integer representation large enough to represent the
maximum possible value but is intended to remind the
implementer to check the length of this and all other tags
during verification and to test for integer overflow when
decoding the value. Implementers may need to limit the actual
value expressed to a value smaller than 10^76, e.g., to allow a
message to fit within the available storage space.
ABNF:
sig-l-tag = %x6c [FWS] "=" [FWS]
1*76DIGIT
q= A colon-separated list of query methods used to retrieve the
public key (plain-text; OPTIONAL, default is "dns/txt"). Each
query method is of the form "type[/options]", where the syntax and
semantics of the options depend on the type and specified options.
If there are multiple query mechanisms listed, the choice of query
mechanism MUST NOT change the interpretation of the signature.
Implementations MUST use the recognized query mechanisms in the
order presented. Unrecognized query mechanisms MUST be ignored.
Currently, the only valid value is "dns/txt", which defines the
DNS TXT resource record (RR) lookup algorithm described elsewhere
in this document. The only option defined for the "dns" query
type is "txt", which MUST be included. Verifiers and Signers MUST
support "dns/txt".
ABNF:
sig-q-tag = %x71 [FWS] "=" [FWS] sig-q-tag-method
*([FWS] ":" [FWS] sig-q-tag-method)
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sig-q-tag-method = "dns/txt" / x-sig-q-tag-type
["/" x-sig-q-tag-args]
x-sig-q-tag-type = hyphenated-word ; for future extension
x-sig-q-tag-args = qp-hdr-value
s= The selector subdividing the namespace for the "d=" (domain) tag
(plain-text; REQUIRED).
Internationalized selector names MUST be encoded as A-labels, as
described in Section 2.3 of [RFC5890].
ABNF:
sig-s-tag = %x73 [FWS] "=" [FWS] selector
t= Signature Timestamp (plain-text unsigned decimal integer;
RECOMMENDED, default is an unknown creation time). The time that
this signature was created. The format is the number of seconds
since 00:00:00 on January 1, 1970 in the UTC time zone. The value
is expressed as an unsigned integer in decimal ASCII. This value
is not constrained to fit into a 31- or 32-bit integer.
Implementations SHOULD be prepared to handle values up to at least
10^12 (until approximately AD 200,000; this fits into 40 bits).
To avoid denial-of-service attacks, implementations MAY consider
any value longer than 12 digits to be infinite. Leap seconds are
not counted. Implementations MAY ignore signatures that have a
timestamp in the future.
ABNF:
sig-t-tag = %x74 [FWS] "=" [FWS] 1*12DIGIT
x= Signature Expiration (plain-text unsigned decimal integer;
RECOMMENDED, default is no expiration). The format is the same as
in the "t=" tag, represented as an absolute date, not as a time
delta from the signing timestamp. The value is expressed as an
unsigned integer in decimal ASCII, with the same constraints on
the value in the "t=" tag. Signatures MAY be considered invalid
if the verification time at the Verifier is past the expiration
date. The verification time should be the time that the message
was first received at the administrative domain of the Verifier if
that time is reliably available; otherwise, the current time
should be used. The value of the "x=" tag MUST be greater than
the value of the "t=" tag if both are present.
INFORMATIVE NOTE: The "x=" tag is not intended as an anti-
replay defense.
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INFORMATIVE NOTE: Due to clock drift, the receiver's notion of
when to consider the signature expired may not exactly match
what the sender is expecting. Receivers MAY add a 'fudge
factor' to allow for such possible drift.
ABNF:
sig-x-tag = %x78 [FWS] "=" [FWS]
1*12DIGIT
z= Copied header fields (dkim-quoted-printable, but see description;
OPTIONAL, default is null). A vertical-bar-separated list of
selected header fields present when the message was signed,
including both the field name and value. It is not required to
include all header fields present at the time of signing. This
field need not contain the same header fields listed in the "h="
tag. The header field text itself must encode the vertical bar
("|", %x7C) character (i.e., vertical bars in the "z=" text are
meta-characters, and any actual vertical bar characters in a
copied header field must be encoded). Note that all whitespace
must be encoded, including whitespace between the colon and the
header field value. After encoding, FWS MAY be added at arbitrary
locations in order to avoid excessively long lines; such
whitespace is NOT part of the value of the header field and MUST
be removed before decoding.
The header fields referenced by the "h=" tag refer to the fields
in the [RFC5322] header of the message, not to any copied fields
in the "z=" tag. Copied header field values are for diagnostic
use.
ABNF:
sig-z-tag = %x7A [FWS] "=" [FWS] sig-z-tag-copy
*( "|" [FWS] sig-z-tag-copy )
sig-z-tag-copy = hdr-name [FWS] ":" qp-hdr-value
INFORMATIVE EXAMPLE of a signature header field spread across
multiple continuation lines:
DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; d=example.net; s=brisbane;
c=simple; q=dns/txt; i=@eng.example.net;
t=1117574938; x=1118006938;
h=from:to:subject:date;
z=From:foo@eng.example.net|To:joe@example.com|
Subject:demo=20run|Date:July=205,=202005=203:44:08=20PM=20-0700;
bh=MTIzNDU2Nzg5MDEyMzQ1Njc4OTAxMjM0NTY3ODkwMTI=;
b=dzdVyOfAKCdLXdJOc9G2q8LoXSlEniSbav+yuU4zGeeruD00lszZVoG4ZHRNiYzR
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3.6. Key Management and Representation
Signature applications require some level of assurance that the
verification public key is associated with the claimed Signer. Many
applications achieve this by using public-key certificates issued by
a trusted third party. However, DKIM can achieve a sufficient level
of security, with significantly enhanced scalability, by simply
having the Verifier query the purported Signer's DNS entry (or some
security-equivalent) in order to retrieve the public key.
DKIM keys can potentially be stored in multiple types of key servers
and in multiple formats. The storage and format of keys are
irrelevant to the remainder of the DKIM algorithm.
Parameters to the key lookup algorithm are the type of the lookup
(the "q=" tag), the domain of the Signer (the "d=" tag of the DKIM-
Signature header field), and the selector (the "s=" tag).
public_key = dkim_find_key(q_val, d_val, s_val)
This document defines a single binding, using DNS TXT RRs to
distribute the keys. Other bindings may be defined in the future.
3.6.1. Textual Representation
It is expected that many key servers will choose to present the keys
in an otherwise unstructured text format (for example, an XML form
would not be considered to be unstructured text for this purpose).
The following definition MUST be used for any DKIM key represented in
an otherwise unstructured textual form.
The overall syntax is a tag-list as described in Section 3.2. The
current valid tags are described below. Other tags MAY be present
and MUST be ignored by any implementation that does not understand
them.
v= Version of the DKIM key record (plain-text; RECOMMENDED, default
is "DKIM1"). If specified, this tag MUST be set to "DKIM1"
(without the quotes). This tag MUST be the first tag in the
record. Records beginning with a "v=" tag with any other value
MUST be discarded. Note that Verifiers must do a string
comparison on this value; for example, "DKIM1" is not the same as
"DKIM1.0".
ABNF:
key-v-tag = %x76 [FWS] "=" [FWS] %x44.4B.49.4D.31
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h= Acceptable hash algorithms (plain-text; OPTIONAL, defaults to
allowing all algorithms). A colon-separated list of hash
algorithms that might be used. Unrecognized algorithms MUST be
ignored. Refer to Section 3.3 for a discussion of the hash
algorithms implemented by Signers and Verifiers. The set of
algorithms listed in this tag in each record is an operational
choice made by the Signer.
ABNF:
key-h-tag = %x68 [FWS] "=" [FWS] key-h-tag-alg
*( [FWS] ":" [FWS] key-h-tag-alg )
key-h-tag-alg = "sha1" / "sha256" / x-key-h-tag-alg
x-key-h-tag-alg = hyphenated-word ; for future extension
k= Key type (plain-text; OPTIONAL, default is "rsa"). Signers and
Verifiers MUST support the "rsa" key type. The "rsa" key type
indicates that an ASN.1 DER-encoded [ITU-X660-1997] RSAPublicKey
(see [RFC3447], Sections 3.1 and A.1.1) is being used in the "p="
tag. (Note: the "p=" tag further encodes the value using the
base64 algorithm.) Unrecognized key types MUST be ignored.
ABNF:
key-k-tag = %x76 [FWS] "=" [FWS] key-k-tag-type
key-k-tag-type = "rsa" / x-key-k-tag-type
x-key-k-tag-type = hyphenated-word ; for future extension
n= Notes that might be of interest to a human (qp-section; OPTIONAL,
default is empty). No interpretation is made by any program.
This tag should be used sparingly in any key server mechanism that
has space limitations (notably DNS). This is intended for use by
administrators, not end users.
ABNF:
key-n-tag = %x6e [FWS] "=" [FWS] qp-section
p= Public-key data (base64; REQUIRED). An empty value means that
this public key has been revoked. The syntax and semantics of
this tag value before being encoded in base64 are defined by the
"k=" tag.
INFORMATIVE RATIONALE: If a private key has been compromised or
otherwise disabled (e.g., an outsourcing contract has been
terminated), a Signer might want to explicitly state that it
knows about the selector, but all messages using that selector
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should fail verification. Verifiers SHOULD return an error
code for any DKIM-Signature header field with a selector
referencing a revoked key. (See Section 6.1.2 for details.)
ABNF:
key-p-tag = %x70 [FWS] "=" [ [FWS] base64string]
INFORMATIVE NOTE: A base64string is permitted to include
whitespace (FWS) at arbitrary places; however, any CRLFs must
be followed by at least one WSP character. Implementers and
administrators are cautioned to ensure that selector TXT RRs
conform to this specification.
s= Service Type (plain-text; OPTIONAL; default is "*"). A colon-
separated list of service types to which this record applies.
Verifiers for a given service type MUST ignore this record if the
appropriate type is not listed. Unrecognized service types MUST
be ignored. Currently defined service types are as follows:
* matches all service types
email electronic mail (not necessarily limited to SMTP)
This tag is intended to constrain the use of keys for other
purposes, should use of DKIM be defined by other services in the
future.
ABNF:
key-s-tag = %x73 [FWS] "=" [FWS] key-s-tag-type
*( [FWS] ":" [FWS] key-s-tag-type )
key-s-tag-type = "email" / "*" / x-key-s-tag-type
x-key-s-tag-type = hyphenated-word ; for future extension
t= Flags, represented as a colon-separated list of names (plain-
text; OPTIONAL, default is no flags set). Unrecognized flags MUST
be ignored. The defined flags are as follows:
y This domain is testing DKIM. Verifiers MUST NOT treat messages
from Signers in testing mode differently from unsigned email,
even should the signature fail to verify. Verifiers MAY wish
to track testing mode results to assist the Signer.
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s Any DKIM-Signature header fields using the "i=" tag MUST have
the same domain value on the right-hand side of the "@" in the
"i=" tag and the value of the "d=" tag. That is, the "i="
domain MUST NOT be a subdomain of "d=". Use of this flag is
RECOMMENDED unless subdomaining is required.
ABNF:
key-t-tag = %x74 [FWS] "=" [FWS] key-t-tag-flag
*( [FWS] ":" [FWS] key-t-tag-flag )
key-t-tag-flag = "y" / "s" / x-key-t-tag-flag
x-key-t-tag-flag = hyphenated-word ; for future extension
3.6.2. DNS Binding
A binding using DNS TXT RRs as a key service is hereby defined. All
implementations MUST support this binding.
3.6.2.1. Namespace
All DKIM keys are stored in a subdomain named "_domainkey". Given a
DKIM-Signature field with a "d=" tag of "example.com" and an "s=" tag
of "foo.bar", the DNS query will be for
"foo.bar._domainkey.example.com".
3.6.2.2. Resource Record Types for Key Storage
The DNS Resource Record type used is specified by an option to the
query-type ("q=") tag. The only option defined in this base
specification is "txt", indicating the use of a TXT RR. A later
extension of this standard may define another RR type.
Strings in a TXT RR MUST be concatenated together before use with no
intervening whitespace. TXT RRs MUST be unique for a particular
selector name; that is, if there are multiple records in an RRset,
the results are undefined.
TXT RRs are encoded as described in Section 3.6.1.
3.7. Computing the Message Hashes
Both signing and verifying message signatures start with a step of
computing two cryptographic hashes over the message. Signers will
choose the parameters of the signature as described in "Signer
Actions" (Section 5); Verifiers will use the parameters specified in
the DKIM-Signature header field being verified. In the following
discussion, the names of the tags in the DKIM-Signature header field
that either exists (when verifying) or will be created (when signing)
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are used. Note that canonicalization (Section 3.4) is only used to
prepare the email for signing or verifying; it does not affect the
transmitted email in any way.
The Signer/Verifier MUST compute two hashes: one over the body of the
message and one over the selected header fields of the message.
Signers MUST compute them in the order shown. Verifiers MAY compute
them in any order convenient to the Verifier, provided that the
result is semantically identical to the semantics that would be the
case had they been computed in this order.
In hash step 1, the Signer/Verifier MUST hash the message body,
canonicalized using the body canonicalization algorithm specified in
the "c=" tag and then truncated to the length specified in the "l="
tag. That hash value is then converted to base64 form and inserted
into (Signers) or compared to (Verifiers) the "bh=" tag of the DKIM-
Signature header field.
In hash step 2, the Signer/Verifier MUST pass the following to the
hash algorithm in the indicated order.
1. The header fields specified by the "h=" tag, in the order
specified in that tag, and canonicalized using the header
canonicalization algorithm specified in the "c=" tag. Each
header field MUST be terminated with a single CRLF.
2. The DKIM-Signature header field that exists (verifying) or will
be inserted (signing) in the message, with the value of the "b="
tag (including all surrounding whitespace) deleted (i.e., treated
as the empty string), canonicalized using the header
canonicalization algorithm specified in the "c=" tag, and without
a trailing CRLF.
All tags and their values in the DKIM-Signature header field are
included in the cryptographic hash with the sole exception of the
value portion of the "b=" (signature) tag, which MUST be treated as
the null string. All tags MUST be included even if they might not be
understood by the Verifier. The header field MUST be presented to
the hash algorithm after the body of the message rather than with the
rest of the header fields and MUST be canonicalized as specified in
the "c=" (canonicalization) tag. The DKIM-Signature header field
MUST NOT be included in its own "h=" tag, although other DKIM-
Signature header fields MAY be signed (see Section 4).
When calculating the hash on messages that will be transmitted using
base64 or quoted-printable encoding, Signers MUST compute the hash
after the encoding. Likewise, the Verifier MUST incorporate the
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values into the hash before decoding the base64 or quoted-printable
text. However, the hash MUST be computed before transport-level
encodings such as SMTP "dot-stuffing" (the modification of lines
beginning with a "." to avoid confusion with the SMTP end-of-message
marker, as specified in [RFC5321]).
With the exception of the canonicalization procedure described in
Section 3.4, the DKIM signing process treats the body of messages as
simply a string of octets. DKIM messages MAY be either in plain-text
or in MIME format; no special treatment is afforded to MIME content.
Message attachments in MIME format MUST be included in the content
that is signed.
More formally, pseudo-code for the signature algorithm is:
body-hash = hash-alg (canon-body, l-param)
data-hash = hash-alg (h-headers, D-SIG, body-hash)
signature = sig-alg (d-domain, selector, data-hash)
where:
body-hash: is the output from hashing the body, using hash-alg.
hash-alg: is the hashing algorithm specified in the "a" parameter.
canon-body: is a canonicalized representation of the body, produced
using the body algorithm specified in the "c" parameter,
as defined in Section 3.4 and excluding the
DKIM-Signature field.
l-param: is the length-of-body value of the "l" parameter.
data-hash: is the output from using the hash-alg algorithm, to hash
the header including the DKIM-Signature header, and the
body hash.
h-headers: is the list of headers to be signed, as specified in the
"h" parameter.
D-SIG: is the canonicalized DKIM-Signature field itself without
the signature value portion of the parameter, that is, an
empty parameter value.
signature: is the signature value produced by the signing algorithm.
sig-alg: is the signature algorithm specified by the "a"
parameter.
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d-domain: is the domain name specified in the "d" parameter.
selector: is the selector value specified in the "s" parameter.
NOTE: Many digital signature APIs provide both hashing and
application of the RSA private key using a single "sign()"
primitive. When using such an API, the last two steps in the
algorithm would probably be combined into a single call that would
perform both the "a-hash-alg" and the "sig-alg".
3.8. Input Requirements
A message that is not compliant with [RFC5322], [RFC2045], and
[RFC2047] can be subject to attempts by intermediaries to correct or
interpret such content. See Section 8 of [RFC4409] for examples of
changes that are commonly made. Such "corrections" may invalidate
DKIM signatures or have other undesirable effects, including some
that involve changes to the way a message is presented to an end
user.
Accordingly, DKIM's design is predicated on valid input. Therefore,
Signers and Verifiers SHOULD take reasonable steps to ensure that the
messages they are processing are valid according to [RFC5322],
[RFC2045], and any other relevant message format standards.
See Section 8.15 for additional discussion.
3.9. Output Requirements
The evaluation of each signature ends in one of three states, which
this document refers to as follows:
SUCCESS: a successful verification
PERMFAIL: a permanent, non-recoverable error such as a signature
verification failure
TEMPFAIL: a temporary, recoverable error such as a DNS query timeout
For each signature that verifies successfully or produces a TEMPFAIL
result, output of the DKIM algorithm MUST include the set of:
o The domain name, taken from the "d=" signature tag; and
o The result of the verification attempt for that signature.
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The output MAY include other signature properties or result meta-
data, including PERMFAILed or otherwise ignored signatures, for use
by modules that consume those results.
See Section 6.1 for discussion of signature validation result codes.
3.10. Signing by Parent Domains
In some circumstances, it is desirable for a domain to apply a
signature on behalf of any of its subdomains without the need to
maintain separate selectors (key records) in each subdomain. By
default, private keys corresponding to key records can be used to
sign messages for any subdomain of the domain in which they reside;
for example, a key record for the domain example.com can be used to
verify messages where the AUID ("i=" tag of the signature) is
sub.example.com, or even sub1.sub2.example.com. In order to limit
the capability of such keys when this is not intended, the "s" flag
MAY be set in the "t=" tag of the key record, to constrain the
validity of the domain of the AUID. If the referenced key record
contains the "s" flag as part of the "t=" tag, the domain of the AUID
("i=" flag) MUST be the same as that of the SDID (d=) domain. If
this flag is absent, the domain of the AUID MUST be the same as, or a
subdomain of, the SDID.
3.11. Relationship between SDID and AUID
DKIM's primary task is to communicate from the Signer to a recipient-
side Identity Assessor a single Signing Domain Identifier (SDID) that
refers to a responsible identity. DKIM MAY optionally provide a
single responsible Agent or User Identifier (AUID).
Hence, DKIM's mandatory output to a receive-side Identity Assessor is
a single domain name. Within the scope of its use as DKIM output,
the name has only basic domain name semantics; any possible owner-
specific semantics are outside the scope of DKIM. That is, within
its role as a DKIM identifier, additional semantics cannot be assumed
by an Identity Assessor.
Upon successfully verifying the signature, a receive-side DKIM
Verifier MUST communicate the Signing Domain Identifier (d=) to a
consuming Identity Assessor module and MAY communicate the Agent or
User Identifier (i=) if present.
To the extent that a receiver attempts to intuit any structured
semantics for either of the identifiers, this is a heuristic function
that is outside the scope of DKIM's specification and semantics.
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Hence, it is relegated to a higher-level service, such as a delivery-
handling filter that integrates a variety of inputs and performs
heuristic analysis of them.
INFORMATIVE DISCUSSION: This document does not require the value
of the SDID or AUID to match an identifier in any other message
header field. This requirement is, instead, an Assessor policy
issue. The purpose of such a linkage would be to authenticate the
value in that other header field. This, in turn, is the basis for
applying a trust assessment based on the identifier value. Trust
is a broad and complex topic, and trust mechanisms are subject to
highly creative attacks. The real-world efficacy of any but the
most basic bindings between the SDID or AUID and other identities
is not well established, nor is its vulnerability to subversion by
an attacker. Hence, reliance on the use of such bindings should
be strictly limited. In particular, it is not at all clear to
what extent a typical end-user recipient can rely on any
assurances that might be made by successful use of the SDID or
AUID.
4. Semantics of Multiple Signatures
4.1. Example Scenarios
There are many reasons why a message might have multiple signatures.
For example, suppose SHA-256 is in the future found to be
insufficiently strong, and DKIM usage transitions to SHA-1024. A
Signer might immediately sign using the newer algorithm but also
continue to sign using the older algorithm for interoperability with
Verifiers that had not yet upgraded. The Signer would do this by
adding two DKIM-Signature header fields, one using each algorithm.
Older Verifiers that did not recognize SHA-1024 as an acceptable
algorithm would skip that signature and use the older algorithm;
newer Verifiers could use either signature at their option and, all
other things being equal, might not even attempt to verify the other
signature.
Similarly, a Signer might sign a message including all header fields
and no "l=" tag (to satisfy strict Verifiers) and a second time with
a limited set of header fields and an "l=" tag (in anticipation of
possible message modifications en route to other Verifiers).
Verifiers could then choose which signature they prefer.
Of course, a message might also have multiple signatures because it
passed through multiple Signers. A common case is expected to be
that of a signed message that passes through a mailing list that also
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signs all messages. Assuming both of those signatures verify, a
recipient might choose to accept the message if either of those
signatures were known to come from trusted sources.
In particular, recipients might choose to whitelist mailing lists to
which they have subscribed and that have acceptable anti-abuse
policies so as to accept messages sent to that list even from unknown
authors. They might also subscribe to less trusted mailing lists
(e.g., those without anti-abuse protection) and be willing to accept
all messages from specific authors but insist on doing additional
abuse scanning for other messages.
Another related example of multiple Signers might be forwarding
services, such as those commonly associated with academic alumni
sites. For example, a recipient might have an address at
members.example.org, a site that has anti-abuse protection that is
somewhat less effective than the recipient would prefer. Such a
recipient might have specific authors whose messages would be trusted
absolutely, but messages from unknown authors that had passed the
forwarder's scrutiny would have only medium trust.
4.2. Interpretation
A Signer that is adding a signature to a message merely creates a new
DKIM-Signature header, using the usual semantics of the "h=" option.
A Signer MAY sign previously existing DKIM-Signature header fields
using the method described in Section 5.4 to sign trace header
fields.
Note that Signers should be cognizant that signing DKIM-Signature
header fields may result in signature failures with intermediaries
that do not recognize that DKIM-Signature header fields are trace
header fields and unwittingly reorder them, thus breaking such
signatures. For this reason, signing existing DKIM-Signature header
fields is unadvised, albeit legal.
INFORMATIVE NOTE: If a header field with multiple instances is
signed, those header fields are always signed from the bottom up.
Thus, it is not possible to sign only specific DKIM-Signature
header fields. For example, if the message being signed already
contains three DKIM-Signature header fields A, B, and C, it is
possible to sign all of them, B and C only, or C only, but not A
only, B only, A and B only, or A and C only.
A Signer MAY add more than one DKIM-Signature header field using
different parameters. For example, during a transition period, a
Signer might want to produce signatures using two different hash
algorithms.
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Signers SHOULD NOT remove any DKIM-Signature header fields from
messages they are signing, even if they know that the signatures
cannot be verified.
When evaluating a message with multiple signatures, a Verifier SHOULD
evaluate signatures independently and on their own merits. For
example, a Verifier that by policy chooses not to accept signatures
with deprecated cryptographic algorithms would consider such
signatures invalid. Verifiers MAY process signatures in any order of
their choice; for example, some Verifiers might choose to process
signatures corresponding to the From field in the message header
before other signatures. See Section 6.1 for more information about
signature choices.
INFORMATIVE IMPLEMENTATION NOTE: Verifier attempts to correlate
valid signatures with invalid signatures in an attempt to guess
why a signature failed are ill-advised. In particular, there is
no general way that a Verifier can determine that an invalid
signature was ever valid.
Verifiers SHOULD continue to check signatures until a signature
successfully verifies to the satisfaction of the Verifier. To limit
potential denial-of-service attacks, Verifiers MAY limit the total
number of signatures they will attempt to verify.
If a Verifier module reports signatures whose evaluations produced
PERMFAIL results, Identity Assessors SHOULD ignore those signatures
(see Section 6.1), acting as though they were not present in the
message.
5. Signer Actions
The following steps are performed in order by Signers.
5.1. Determine Whether the Email Should Be Signed and by Whom
A Signer can obviously only sign email for domains for which it has a
private key and the necessary knowledge of the corresponding public
key and selector information. However, there are a number of other
reasons beyond the lack of a private key why a Signer could choose
not to sign an email.
INFORMATIVE NOTE: A Signer can be implemented as part of any
portion of the mail system as deemed appropriate, including an
MUA, a SUBMISSION server, or an MTA. Wherever implemented,
Signers should beware of signing (and thereby asserting
responsibility for) messages that may be problematic. In
particular, within a trusted enclave, the signing domain might be
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derived from the header according to local policy; SUBMISSION
servers might only sign messages from users that are properly
authenticated and authorized.
INFORMATIVE IMPLEMENTER ADVICE: SUBMISSION servers should not sign
Received header fields if the outgoing gateway MTA obfuscates
Received header fields, for example, to hide the details of
internal topology.
If an email cannot be signed for some reason, it is a local policy
decision as to what to do with that email.
5.2. Select a Private Key and Corresponding Selector Information
This specification does not define the basis by which a Signer should
choose which private key and selector information to use. Currently,
all selectors are equal as far as this specification is concerned, so
the decision should largely be a matter of administrative
convenience. Distribution and management of private keys is also
outside the scope of this document.
INFORMATIVE OPERATIONS ADVICE: A Signer should not sign with a
private key when the selector containing the corresponding public
key is expected to be revoked or removed before the Verifier has
an opportunity to validate the signature. The Signer should
anticipate that Verifiers can choose to defer validation, perhaps
until the message is actually read by the final recipient. In
particular, when rotating to a new key pair, signing should
immediately commence with the new private key, and the old public
key should be retained for a reasonable validation interval before
being removed from the key server.
5.3. Normalize the Message to Prevent Transport Conversions
Some messages, particularly those using 8-bit characters, are subject
to modification during transit, notably conversion to 7-bit form.
Such conversions will break DKIM signatures. In order to minimize
the chances of such breakage, Signers SHOULD convert the message to a
suitable MIME content-transfer encoding such as quoted-printable or
base64 as described in [RFC2045] before signing. Such conversion is
outside the scope of DKIM; the actual message SHOULD be converted to
7-bit MIME by an MUA or MSA prior to presentation to the DKIM
algorithm.
If the message is submitted to the Signer with any local encoding
that will be modified before transmission, that modification to
canonical [RFC5322] form MUST be done before signing. In particular,
bare CR or LF characters (used by some systems as a local line
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separator convention) MUST be converted to the SMTP-standard CRLF
sequence before the message is signed. Any conversion of this sort
SHOULD be applied to the message actually sent to the recipient(s),
not just to the version presented to the signing algorithm.
More generally, the Signer MUST sign the message as it is expected to
be received by the Verifier rather than in some local or internal
form.
5.3.1. Body Length Limits
A body length count MAY be specified to limit the signature
calculation to an initial prefix of the body text, measured in
octets. If the body length count is not specified, the entire
message body is signed.
INFORMATIVE RATIONALE: This capability is provided because it is
very common for mailing lists to add trailers to messages (e.g.,
instructions on how to get off the list). Until those messages
are also signed, the body length count is a useful tool for the
Verifier since it can, as a matter of policy, accept messages
having valid signatures with extraneous data.
The length actually hashed should be inserted in the "l=" tag of the
DKIM-Signature header field. (See Section 3.5.)
The body length count allows the Signer of a message to permit data
to be appended to the end of the body of a signed message. The body
length count MUST be calculated following the canonicalization
algorithm; for example, any whitespace ignored by a canonicalization
algorithm is not included as part of the body length count.
A body length count of zero means that the body is completely
unsigned.
Signers wishing to ensure that no modification of any sort can occur
should specify the "simple" canonicalization algorithm for both
header and body and omit the body length count.
See Section 8.2 for further discussion.
5.4. Determine the Header Fields to Sign
The From header field MUST be signed (that is, included in the "h="
tag of the resulting DKIM-Signature header field). Signers SHOULD
NOT sign an existing header field likely to be legitimately modified
or removed in transit. In particular, [RFC5321] explicitly permits
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modification or removal of the Return-Path header field in transit.
Signers MAY include any other header fields present at the time of
signing at the discretion of the Signer.
INFORMATIVE OPERATIONS NOTE: The choice of which header fields to
sign is non-obvious. One strategy is to sign all existing, non-
repeatable header fields. An alternative strategy is to sign only
header fields that are likely to be displayed to or otherwise be
likely to affect the processing of the message at the receiver. A
third strategy is to sign only "well-known" headers. Note that
Verifiers may treat unsigned header fields with extreme
skepticism, including refusing to display them to the end user or
even ignoring the signature if it does not cover certain header
fields. For this reason, signing fields present in the message
such as Date, Subject, Reply-To, Sender, and all MIME header
fields are highly advised.
The DKIM-Signature header field is always implicitly signed and MUST
NOT be included in the "h=" tag except to indicate that other
preexisting signatures are also signed.
Signers MAY claim to have signed header fields that do not exist
(that is, Signers MAY include the header field name in the "h=" tag
even if that header field does not exist in the message). When
computing the signature, the nonexisting header field MUST be treated
as the null string (including the header field name, header field
value, all punctuation, and the trailing CRLF).
INFORMATIVE RATIONALE: This allows Signers to explicitly assert
the absence of a header field; if that header field is added
later, the signature will fail.
INFORMATIVE NOTE: A header field name need only be listed once
more than the actual number of that header field in a message at
the time of signing in order to prevent any further additions.
For example, if there is a single Comments header field at the
time of signing, listing Comments twice in the "h=" tag is
sufficient to prevent any number of Comments header fields from
being appended; it is not necessary (but is legal) to list
Comments three or more times in the "h=" tag.
Refer to Section 5.4.2 for a discussion of the procedure to be
followed when canonicalizing a header with more than one instance of
a particular header field name.
Signers need to be careful of signing header fields that might have
additional instances added later in the delivery process, since such
header fields might be inserted after the signed instance or
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otherwise reordered. Trace header fields (such as Received) and
Resent-* blocks are the only fields prohibited by [RFC5322] from
being reordered. In particular, since DKIM-Signature header fields
may be reordered by some intermediate MTAs, signing existing DKIM-
Signature header fields is error-prone.
INFORMATIVE ADMONITION: Despite the fact that [RFC5322] does not
prohibit the reordering of header fields, reordering of signed
header fields with multiple instances by intermediate MTAs will
cause DKIM signatures to be broken; such antisocial behavior
should be avoided.
INFORMATIVE IMPLEMENTER'S NOTE: Although not required by this
specification, all end-user visible header fields should be signed
to avoid possible "indirect spamming". For example, if the
Subject header field is not signed, a spammer can resend a
previously signed mail, replacing the legitimate subject with a
one-line spam.
5.4.1. Recommended Signature Content
The purpose of the DKIM cryptographic algorithm is to affix an
identifier to the message in a way that is both robust against normal
transit-related changes and resistant to kinds of replay attacks. An
essential aspect of satisfying these requirements is choosing what
header fields to include in the hash and what fields to exclude.
The basic rule for choosing fields to include is to select those
fields that constitute the "core" of the message content. Hence, any
replay attack will have to include these in order to have the
signature succeed; however, with these included, the core of the
message is valid, even if sent on to new recipients.
Common examples of fields with addresses and fields with textual
content related to the body are:
o From (REQUIRED; see Section 5.4)
o Reply-To
o Subject
o Date
o To, Cc
o Resent-Date, Resent-From, Resent-To, Resent-Cc
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o In-Reply-To, References
o List-Id, List-Help, List-Unsubscribe, List-Subscribe, List-Post,
List-Owner, List-Archive
If the "l=" signature tag is in use (see Section 3.5), the Content-
Type field is also a candidate for being included as it could be
replaced in a way that causes completely different content to be
rendered to the receiving user.
There are trade-offs in the decision of what constitutes the "core"
of the message, which for some fields is a subjective concept.
Including fields such as "Message-ID", for example, is useful if one
considers a mechanism for being able to distinguish separate
instances of the same message to be core content. Similarly, "In-
Reply-To" and "References" might be desirable to include if one
considers message threading to be a core part of the message.
Another class of fields that may be of interest are those that convey
security-related information about the message, such as
Authentication-Results [RFC5451].
The basic rule for choosing fields to exclude is to select those
fields for which there are multiple fields with the same name and
fields that are modified in transit. Examples of these are:
o Return-Path
o Received
o Comments, Keywords
Note that the DKIM-Signature field is also excluded from the header
hash because its handling is specified separately.
Typically, it is better to exclude other optional fields because of
the potential that additional fields of the same name will be
legitimately added or reordered prior to verification. There are
likely to be legitimate exceptions to this rule because of the wide
variety of application-specific header fields that might be applied
to a message, some of which are unlikely to be duplicated, modified,
or reordered.
Signers SHOULD choose canonicalization algorithms based on the types
of messages they process and their aversion to risk. For example,
e-commerce sites sending primarily purchase receipts, which are not
expected to be processed by mailing lists or other software likely to
modify messages, will generally prefer "simple" canonicalization.
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Sites sending primarily person-to-person email will likely prefer to
be more resilient to modification during transport by using "relaxed"
canonicalization.
Unless mail is processed through intermediaries, such as mailing
lists that might add "unsubscribe" instructions to the bottom of the
message body, the "l=" tag is likely to convey no additional benefit
while providing an avenue for unauthorized addition of text to a
message. The use of "l=0" takes this to the extreme, allowing
complete alteration of the text of the message without invalidating
the signature. Moreover, a Verifier would be within its rights to
consider a partly signed message body as unacceptable. Judicious use
is advised.
5.4.2. Signatures Involving Multiple Instances of a Field
Signers choosing to sign an existing header field that occurs more
than once in the message (such as Received) MUST sign the physically
last instance of that header field in the header block. Signers
wishing to sign multiple instances of such a header field MUST
include the header field name multiple times in the "h=" tag of the
DKIM-Signature header field and MUST sign such header fields in order
from the bottom of the header field block to the top. The Signer MAY
include more instances of a header field name in "h=" than there are
actual corresponding header fields so that the signature will not
verify if additional header fields of that name are added.
INFORMATIVE EXAMPLE:
If the Signer wishes to sign two existing Received header fields,
and the existing header contains:
Received: <A>
Received: <B>
Received: <C>
then the resulting DKIM-Signature header field should read:
DKIM-Signature: ... h=Received : Received :...
and Received header fields <C> and <B> will be signed in that
order.
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5.5. Compute the Message Hash and Signature
The Signer MUST compute the message hash as described in Section 3.7
and then sign it using the selected public-key algorithm. This will
result in a DKIM-Signature header field that will include the body
hash and a signature of the header hash, where that header includes
the DKIM-Signature header field itself.
Entities such as mailing list managers that implement DKIM and that
modify the message or a header field (for example, inserting
unsubscribe information) before retransmitting the message SHOULD
check any existing signature on input and MUST make such
modifications before re-signing the message.
5.6. Insert the DKIM-Signature Header Field
Finally, the Signer MUST insert the DKIM-Signature header field
created in the previous step prior to transmitting the email. The
DKIM-Signature header field MUST be the same as used to compute the
hash as described above, except that the value of the "b=" tag MUST
be the appropriately signed hash computed in the previous step,
signed using the algorithm specified in the "a=" tag of the DKIM-
Signature header field and using the private key corresponding to the
selector given in the "s=" tag of the DKIM-Signature header field, as
chosen above in Section 5.2.
The DKIM-Signature header field MUST be inserted before any other
DKIM-Signature fields in the header block.
INFORMATIVE IMPLEMENTATION NOTE: The easiest way to achieve this
is to insert the DKIM-Signature header field at the beginning of
the header block. In particular, it may be placed before any
existing Received header fields. This is consistent with treating
DKIM-Signature as a trace header field.
6. Verifier Actions
Since a Signer MAY remove or revoke a public key at any time, it is
advised that verification occur in a timely manner. In many
configurations, the most timely place is during acceptance by the
border MTA or shortly thereafter. In particular, deferring
verification until the message is accessed by the end user is
discouraged.
A border or intermediate MTA MAY verify the message signature(s). An
MTA who has performed verification MAY communicate the result of that
verification by adding a verification header field to incoming
messages. This simplifies things considerably for the user, who can
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now use an existing mail user agent. Most MUAs have the ability to
filter messages based on message header fields or content; these
filters would be used to implement whatever policy the user wishes
with respect to unsigned mail.
A verifying MTA MAY implement a policy with respect to unverifiable
mail, regardless of whether or not it applies the verification header
field to signed messages.
Verifiers MUST produce a result that is semantically equivalent to
applying the steps listed in Sections 6.1, 6.1.1, and 6.1.2 in order.
In practice, several of these steps can be performed in parallel in
order to improve performance.
6.1. Extract Signatures from the Message
The order in which Verifiers try DKIM-Signature header fields is not
defined; Verifiers MAY try signatures in any order they like. For
example, one implementation might try the signatures in textual
order, whereas another might try signatures by identities that match
the contents of the From header field before trying other signatures.
Verifiers MUST NOT attribute ultimate meaning to the order of
multiple DKIM-Signature header fields. In particular, there is
reason to believe that some relays will reorder the header fields in
potentially arbitrary ways.
INFORMATIVE IMPLEMENTATION NOTE: Verifiers might use the order as
a clue to signing order in the absence of any other information.
However, other clues as to the semantics of multiple signatures
(such as correlating the signing host with Received header fields)
might also be considered.
Survivability of signatures after transit is not guaranteed, and
signatures can fail to verify through no fault of the Signer.
Therefore, a Verifier SHOULD NOT treat a message that has one or more
bad signatures and no good signatures differently from a message with
no signature at all.
When a signature successfully verifies, a Verifier will either stop
processing or attempt to verify any other signatures, at the
discretion of the implementation. A Verifier MAY limit the number of
signatures it tries, in order to avoid denial-of-service attacks (see
Section 8.4 for further discussion).
In the following description, text reading "return status
(explanation)" (where "status" is one of "PERMFAIL" or "TEMPFAIL")
means that the Verifier MUST immediately cease processing that
signature. The Verifier SHOULD proceed to the next signature, if one
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is present, and completely ignore the bad signature. If the status
is "PERMFAIL", the signature failed and should not be reconsidered.
If the status is "TEMPFAIL", the signature could not be verified at
this time but may be tried again later. A Verifier MAY either
arrange to defer the message for later processing or try another
signature; if no good signature is found and any of the signatures
resulted in a TEMPFAIL status, the Verifier MAY arrange to defer the
message for later processing. The "(explanation)" is not normative
text; it is provided solely for clarification.
Verifiers that are prepared to validate multiple signature header
fields SHOULD proceed to the next signature header field, if one
exists. However, Verifiers MAY make note of the fact that an invalid
signature was present for consideration at a later step.
INFORMATIVE NOTE: The rationale of this requirement is to permit
messages that have invalid signatures but also a valid signature
to work. For example, a mailing list exploder might opt to leave
the original submitter signature in place even though the exploder
knows that it is modifying the message in some way that will break
that signature, and the exploder inserts its own signature. In
this case, the message should succeed even in the presence of the
known-broken signature.
For each signature to be validated, the following steps should be
performed in such a manner as to produce a result that is
semantically equivalent to performing them in the indicated order.
6.1.1. Validate the Signature Header Field
Implementers MUST meticulously validate the format and values in the
DKIM-Signature header field; any inconsistency or unexpected values
MUST cause the header field to be completely ignored and the Verifier
to return PERMFAIL (signature syntax error). Being "liberal in what
you accept" is definitely a bad strategy in this security context.
Note, however, that this does not include the existence of unknown
tags in a DKIM-Signature header field, which are explicitly
permitted. Verifiers MUST return PERMFAIL (incompatible version)
when presented a DKIM-Signature header field with a "v=" tag that is
inconsistent with this specification.
INFORMATIVE IMPLEMENTATION NOTE: An implementation may, of course,
choose to also verify signatures generated by older versions of
this specification.
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If any tag listed as "required" in Section 3.5 is omitted from the
DKIM-Signature header field, the Verifier MUST ignore the DKIM-
Signature header field and return PERMFAIL (signature missing
required tag).
INFORMATIVE NOTE: The tags listed as required in Section 3.5 are
"v=", "a=", "b=", "bh=", "d=", "h=", and "s=". Should there be a
conflict between this note and Section 3.5, Section 3.5 is
normative.
If the DKIM-Signature header field does not contain the "i=" tag, the
Verifier MUST behave as though the value of that tag were "@d", where
"d" is the value from the "d=" tag.
Verifiers MUST confirm that the domain specified in the "d=" tag is
the same as or a parent domain of the domain part of the "i=" tag.
If not, the DKIM-Signature header field MUST be ignored, and the
Verifier should return PERMFAIL (domain mismatch).
If the "h=" tag does not include the From header field, the Verifier
MUST ignore the DKIM-Signature header field and return PERMFAIL (From
field not signed).
Verifiers MAY ignore the DKIM-Signature header field and return
PERMFAIL (signature expired) if it contains an "x=" tag and the
signature has expired.
Verifiers MAY ignore the DKIM-Signature header field if the domain
used by the Signer in the "d=" tag is not associated with a valid
signing entity. For example, signatures with "d=" values such as
"com" and "co.uk" could be ignored. The list of unacceptable domains
SHOULD be configurable.
Verifiers MAY ignore the DKIM-Signature header field and return
PERMFAIL (unacceptable signature header) for any other reason, for
example, if the signature does not sign header fields that the
Verifier views to be essential. As a case in point, if MIME header
fields are not signed, certain attacks may be possible that the
Verifier would prefer to avoid.
6.1.2. Get the Public Key
The public key for a signature is needed to complete the verification
process. The process of retrieving the public key depends on the
query type as defined by the "q=" tag in the DKIM-Signature header
field. Obviously, a public key need only be retrieved if the process
of extracting the signature information is completely successful.
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Details of key management and representation are described in
Section 3.6. The Verifier MUST validate the key record and MUST
ignore any public-key records that are malformed.
NOTE: The use of a wildcard TXT RR that covers a queried DKIM
domain name will produce a response to a DKIM query that is
unlikely to be a valid DKIM key record. This problem is not
specific to DKIM and applies to many other types of queries.
Client software that processes DNS responses needs to take this
problem into account.
When validating a message, a Verifier MUST perform the following
steps in a manner that is semantically the same as performing them in
the order indicated; in some cases, the implementation may
parallelize or reorder these steps, as long as the semantics remain
unchanged:
1. The Verifier retrieves the public key as described in Section 3.6
using the algorithm in the "q=" tag, the domain from the "d="
tag, and the selector from the "s=" tag.
2. If the query for the public key fails to respond, the Verifier
MAY seek a later verification attempt by returning TEMPFAIL (key
unavailable).
3. If the query for the public key fails because the corresponding
key record does not exist, the Verifier MUST immediately return
PERMFAIL (no key for signature).
4. If the query for the public key returns multiple key records, the
Verifier can choose one of the key records or may cycle through
the key records, performing the remainder of these steps on each
record at the discretion of the implementer. The order of the
key records is unspecified. If the Verifier chooses to cycle
through the key records, then the "return ..." wording in the
remainder of this section means "try the next key record, if any;
if none, return to try another signature in the usual way".
5. If the result returned from the query does not adhere to the
format defined in this specification, the Verifier MUST ignore
the key record and return PERMFAIL (key syntax error). Verifiers
are urged to validate the syntax of key records carefully to
avoid attempted attacks. In particular, the Verifier MUST ignore
keys with a version code ("v=" tag) that they do not implement.
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6. If the "h=" tag exists in the public-key record and the hash
algorithm implied by the "a=" tag in the DKIM-Signature header
field is not included in the contents of the "h=" tag, the
Verifier MUST ignore the key record and return PERMFAIL
(inappropriate hash algorithm).
7. If the public-key data (the "p=" tag) is empty, then this key has
been revoked and the Verifier MUST treat this as a failed
signature check and return PERMFAIL (key revoked). There is no
defined semantic difference between a key that has been revoked
and a key record that has been removed.
8. If the public-key data is not suitable for use with the algorithm
and key types defined by the "a=" and "k=" tags in the DKIM-
Signature header field, the Verifier MUST immediately return
PERMFAIL (inappropriate key algorithm).
6.1.3. Compute the Verification
Given a Signer and a public key, verifying a signature consists of
actions semantically equivalent to the following steps.
1. Based on the algorithm defined in the "c=" tag, the body length
specified in the "l=" tag, and the header field names in the "h="
tag, prepare a canonicalized version of the message as is
described in Section 3.7 (note that this canonicalized version
does not actually replace the original content). When matching
header field names in the "h=" tag against the actual message
header field, comparisons MUST be case-insensitive.
2. Based on the algorithm indicated in the "a=" tag, compute the
message hashes from the canonical copy as described in
Section 3.7.
3. Verify that the hash of the canonicalized message body computed
in the previous step matches the hash value conveyed in the "bh="
tag. If the hash does not match, the Verifier SHOULD ignore the
signature and return PERMFAIL (body hash did not verify).
4. Using the signature conveyed in the "b=" tag, verify the
signature against the header hash using the mechanism appropriate
for the public-key algorithm described in the "a=" tag. If the
signature does not validate, the Verifier SHOULD ignore the
signature and return PERMFAIL (signature did not verify).
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5. Otherwise, the signature has correctly verified.
INFORMATIVE IMPLEMENTER'S NOTE: Implementations might wish to
initiate the public-key query in parallel with calculating the
hash as the public key is not needed until the final decryption is
calculated. Implementations may also verify the signature on the
message header before validating that the message hash listed in
the "bh=" tag in the DKIM-Signature header field matches that of
the actual message body; however, if the body hash does not match,
the entire signature must be considered to have failed.
A body length specified in the "l=" tag of the signature limits the
number of bytes of the body passed to the verification algorithm.
All data beyond that limit is not validated by DKIM. Hence,
Verifiers might treat a message that contains bytes beyond the
indicated body length with suspicion and can choose to treat the
signature as if it were invalid (e.g., by returning PERMFAIL
(unsigned content)).
Should the algorithm reach this point, the verification has
succeeded, and DKIM reports SUCCESS for this signature.
6.2. Communicate Verification Results
Verifiers wishing to communicate the results of verification to other
parts of the mail system may do so in whatever manner they see fit.
For example, implementations might choose to add an email header
field to the message before passing it on. Any such header field
SHOULD be inserted before any existing DKIM-Signature or preexisting
authentication status header fields in the header field block. The
Authentication-Results: header field ([RFC5451]) MAY be used for this
purpose.
INFORMATIVE ADVICE to MUA filter writers: Patterns intended to
search for results header fields to visibly mark authenticated
mail for end users should verify that such a header field was
added by the appropriate verifying domain and that the verified
identity matches the author identity that will be displayed by the
MUA. In particular, MUA filters should not be influenced by bogus
results header fields added by attackers. To circumvent this
attack, Verifiers MAY wish to request deletion of existing results
header fields after verification and before arranging to add a new
header field.
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6.3. Interpret Results/Apply Local Policy
It is beyond the scope of this specification to describe what actions
an Identity Assessor can make, but mail carrying a validated SDID
presents an opportunity to an Identity Assessor that unauthenticated
email does not. Specifically, an authenticated email creates a
predictable identifier by which other decisions can reliably be
managed, such as trust and reputation. Conversely, unauthenticated
email lacks a reliable identifier that can be used to assign trust
and reputation. It is reasonable to treat unauthenticated email as
lacking any trust and having no positive reputation.
In general, modules that consume DKIM verification output SHOULD NOT
determine message acceptability based solely on a lack of any
signature or on an unverifiable signature; such rejection would cause
severe interoperability problems. If an MTA does wish to reject such
messages during an SMTP session (for example, when communicating with
a peer who, by prior agreement, agrees to only send signed messages),
and a signature is missing or does not verify, the handling MTA
SHOULD use a 550/5.7.x reply code.
Where the Verifier is integrated within the MTA and it is not
possible to fetch the public key, perhaps because the key server is
not available, a temporary failure message MAY be generated using a
451/4.7.5 reply code, such as:
451 4.7.5 Unable to verify signature - key server unavailable
Temporary failures such as inability to access the key server or
other external service are the only conditions that SHOULD use a 4xx
SMTP reply code. In particular, cryptographic signature verification
failures MUST NOT provoke 4xx SMTP replies.
Once the signature has been verified, that information MUST be
conveyed to the Identity Assessor (such as an explicit allow/
whitelist and reputation system) and/or to the end user. If the SDID
is not the same as the address in the From: header field, the mail
system SHOULD take pains to ensure that the actual SDID is clear to
the reader.
While the symptoms of a failed verification are obvious -- the
signature doesn't verify -- establishing the exact cause can be more
difficult. If a selector cannot be found, is that because the
selector has been removed, or was the value changed somehow in
transit? If the signature line is missing, is that because it was
never there, or was it removed by an overzealous filter? For
diagnostic purposes, the exact reason why the verification fails
SHOULD be made available and possibly recorded in the system logs.
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If the email cannot be verified, then it SHOULD be treated the same
as all unverified email, regardless of whether or not it looks like
it was signed.
See Section 8.15 for additional discussion.
7. IANA Considerations
DKIM has registered namespaces with IANA. In all cases, new values
are assigned only for values that have been documented in a published
RFC that has IETF Consensus [RFC5226].
This memo updates these registries as described below. Of note is
the addition of a new "status" column. All registrations into these
namespaces MUST include the name being registered, the document in
which it was registered or updated, and an indication of its current
status, which MUST be one of "active" (in current use) or "historic"
(no longer in current use).
No new tags are defined in this specification compared to [RFC4871],
but one has been designated as "historic".
Also, the "Email Authentication Methods" registry is revised to refer
to this update.
7.1. Email Authentication Methods Registry
The "Email Authentication Methods" registry is updated to indicate
that "dkim" is defined in this memo.
7.2. DKIM-Signature Tag Specifications
A DKIM-Signature provides for a list of tag specifications. IANA has
established the "DKIM-Signature Tag Specifications" registry for tag
specifications that can be used in DKIM-Signature fields.
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RFC 6376 DKIM Signatures September 2011
+------+-----------------+--------+
| TYPE | REFERENCE | STATUS |
+------+-----------------+--------+
| v | (this document) | active |
| a | (this document) | active |
| b | (this document) | active |
| bh | (this document) | active |
| c | (this document) | active |
| d | (this document) | active |
| h | (this document) | active |
| i | (this document) | active |
| l | (this document) | active |
| q | (this document) | active |
| s | (this document) | active |
| t | (this document) | active |
| x | (this document) | active |
| z | (this document) | active |
+------+-----------------+--------+
Table 1: DKIM-Signature Tag Specifications Registry Updated Values
7.3. DKIM-Signature Query Method Registry
The "q=" tag-spec (specified in Section 3.5) provides for a list of
query methods.
IANA has established the "DKIM-Signature Query Method" registry for
mechanisms that can be used to retrieve the key that will permit
validation processing of a message signed using DKIM.
+------+--------+-----------------+--------+
| TYPE | OPTION | REFERENCE | STATUS |
+------+--------+-----------------+--------+
| dns | txt | (this document) | active |
+------+--------+-----------------+--------+
Table 2: DKIM-Signature Query Method Registry Updated Values
7.4. DKIM-Signature Canonicalization Registry
The "c=" tag-spec (specified in Section 3.5) provides for a specifier
for canonicalization algorithms for the header and body of the
message.
IANA has established the "DKIM-Signature Canonicalization Header"
Registry for algorithms for converting a message into a canonical
form before signing or verifying using DKIM.
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+---------+-----------------+--------+
| TYPE | REFERENCE | STATUS |
+---------+-----------------+--------+
| simple | (this document) | active |
| relaxed | (this document) | active |
+---------+-----------------+--------+
Table 3: DKIM-Signature Canonicalization Header Registry Updated
Values
+---------+-----------------+--------+
| TYPE | REFERENCE | STATUS |
+---------+-----------------+--------+
| simple | (this document) | active |
| relaxed | (this document) | active |
+---------+-----------------+--------+
Table 4: DKIM-Signature Canonicalization Body Registry Updated Values
7.5. _domainkey DNS TXT Resource Record Tag Specifications
A _domainkey DNS TXT RR provides for a list of tag specifications.
IANA has established the DKIM "_domainkey DNS TXT Record Tag
Specifications" registry for tag specifications that can be used in
DNS TXT resource records.
+------+-----------------+----------+
| TYPE | REFERENCE | STATUS |
+------+-----------------+----------+
| v | (this document) | active |
| g | [RFC4871] | historic |
| h | (this document) | active |
| k | (this document) | active |
| n | (this document) | active |
| p | (this document) | active |
| s | (this document) | active |
| t | (this document) | active |
+------+-----------------+----------+
Table 5: _domainkey DNS TXT Record Tag Specifications Registry
Updated Values
7.6. DKIM Key Type Registry
The "k=" <key-k-tag> (specified in Section 3.6.1) and the "a=" <sig-
a-tag-k> (specified in Section 3.5) tags provide for a list of
mechanisms that can be used to decode a DKIM signature.
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IANA has established the "DKIM Key Type" registry for such
mechanisms.
+------+-----------+--------+
| TYPE | REFERENCE | STATUS |
+------+-----------+--------+
| rsa | [RFC3447] | active |
+------+-----------+--------+
Table 6: DKIM Key Type Registry Updated Values
7.7. DKIM Hash Algorithms Registry
The "h=" <key-h-tag> (specified in Section 3.6.1) and the "a=" <sig-
a-tag-h> (specified in Section 3.5) tags provide for a list of
mechanisms that can be used to produce a digest of message data.
IANA has established the "DKIM Hash Algorithms" registry for such
mechanisms.
+--------+-------------------+--------+
| TYPE | REFERENCE | STATUS |
+--------+-------------------+--------+
| sha1 | [FIPS-180-3-2008] | active |
| sha256 | [FIPS-180-3-2008] | active |
+--------+-------------------+--------+
Table 7: DKIM Hash Algorithms Registry Updated Values
7.8. DKIM Service Types Registry
The "s=" <key-s-tag> tag (specified in Section 3.6.1) provides for a
list of service types to which this selector may apply.
IANA has established the "DKIM Service Types" registry for service
types.
+-------+-----------------+--------+
| TYPE | REFERENCE | STATUS |
+-------+-----------------+--------+
| email | (this document) | active |
| * | (this document) | active |
+-------+-----------------+--------+
Table 8: DKIM Service Types Registry Updated Values
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7.9. DKIM Selector Flags Registry
The "t=" <key-t-tag> tag (specified in Section 3.6.1) provides for a
list of flags to modify interpretation of the selector.
IANA has established the "DKIM Selector Flags" registry for
additional flags.
+------+-----------------+--------+
| TYPE | REFERENCE | STATUS |
+------+-----------------+--------+
| y | (this document) | active |
| s | (this document) | active |
+------+-----------------+--------+
Table 9: DKIM Selector Flags Registry Updated Values
7.10. DKIM-Signature Header Field
IANA has added DKIM-Signature to the "Permanent Message Header Field
Names" registry (see [RFC3864]) for the "mail" protocol, using this
document as the reference.
8. Security Considerations
It has been observed that any introduced mechanism that attempts to
stem the flow of spam is subject to intensive attack. DKIM needs to
be carefully scrutinized to identify potential attack vectors and the
vulnerability to each. See also [RFC4686].
8.1. ASCII Art Attacks
The relaxed body canonicalization algorithm may enable certain types
of extremely crude "ASCII Art" attacks where a message may be
conveyed by adjusting the spacing between words. If this is a
concern, the "simple" body canonicalization algorithm should be used
instead.
8.2. Misuse of Body Length Limits ("l=" Tag)
Use of the "l=" tag might allow display of fraudulent content without
appropriate warning to end users. The "l=" tag is intended for
increasing signature robustness when sending to mailing lists that
both modify their content and do not sign their modified messages.
However, using the "l=" tag enables attacks in which an intermediary
with malicious intent can modify a message to include content that
solely benefits the attacker. It is possible for the appended
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content to completely replace the original content in the end
recipient's eyes and to defeat duplicate message detection
algorithms.
An example of such an attack includes altering the MIME structure,
exploiting lax HTML parsing in the MUA, and defeating duplicate
message detection algorithms.
To avoid this attack, Signers should be extremely wary of using this
tag, and Assessors might wish to ignore signatures that use the tag.
8.3. Misappropriated Private Key
As with any other security application that uses private- or public-
key pairs, DKIM requires caution around the handling and protection
of keys. A compromised private key or access to one means an
intruder or malware can send mail signed by the domain that
advertises the matching public key.
Thus, private keys issued to users, rather than one used by an
ADministrative Management Domain (ADMD) itself, create the usual
problem of securing data stored on personal resources that can affect
the ADMD.
A more secure architecture involves sending messages through an
outgoing MTA that can authenticate the submitter using existing
techniques (e.g., SMTP Authentication), possibly validate the message
itself (e.g., verify that the header is legitimate and that the
content passes a spam content check), and sign the message using a
key appropriate for the submitter address. Such an MTA can also
apply controls on the volume of outgoing mail each user is permitted
to originate in order to further limit the ability of malware to
generate bulk email.
8.4. Key Server Denial-of-Service Attacks
Since the key servers are distributed (potentially separate for each
domain), the number of servers that would need to be attacked to
defeat this mechanism on an Internet-wide basis is very large.
Nevertheless, key servers for individual domains could be attacked,
impeding the verification of messages from that domain. This is not
significantly different from the ability of an attacker to deny
service to the mail exchangers for a given domain, although it
affects outgoing, not incoming, mail.
A variation on this attack involves a very large amount of mail being
sent using spoofed signatures from a given domain: the key servers
for that domain could be overwhelmed with requests in a denial-of-
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service attack (see [RFC4732]). However, given the low overhead of
verification compared with handling of the email message itself, such
an attack would be difficult to mount.
8.5. Attacks against the DNS
Since the DNS is a required binding for key services, specific
attacks against the DNS must be considered.
While the DNS is currently insecure [RFC3833], these security
problems are the motivation behind DNS Security (DNSSEC) [RFC4033],
and all users of the DNS will reap the benefit of that work.
DKIM is only intended as a "sufficient" method of proving
authenticity. It is not intended to provide strong cryptographic
proof about authorship or contents. Other technologies such as
OpenPGP [RFC4880] and S/MIME [RFC5751] address those requirements.
A second security issue related to the DNS revolves around the
increased DNS traffic as a consequence of fetching selector-based
data as well as fetching signing domain policy. Widespread
deployment of DKIM will result in a significant increase in DNS
queries to the claimed signing domain. In the case of forgeries on a
large scale, DNS servers could see a substantial increase in queries.
A specific DNS security issue that should be considered by DKIM
Verifiers is the name chaining attack described in Section 2.3 of
[RFC3833]. A DKIM Verifier, while verifying a DKIM-Signature header
field, could be prompted to retrieve a key record of an attacker's
choosing. This threat can be minimized by ensuring that name
servers, including recursive name servers, used by the Verifier
enforce strict checking of "glue" and other additional information in
DNS responses and are therefore not vulnerable to this attack.
8.6. Replay/Spam Attacks
In this attack, a spammer sends a piece of spam through an MTA that
signs it, banking on the reputation of the signing domain (e.g., a
large popular mailbox provider) rather than its own, and then re-
sends that message to a large number of intended recipients. The
recipients observe the valid signature from the well-known domain,
elevating their trust in the message and increasing the likelihood of
delivery and presentation to the user.
Partial solutions to this problem involve the use of reputation
services to convey the fact that the specific email address is being
used for spam and that messages from that Signer are likely to be
spam. This requires a real-time detection mechanism in order to
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react quickly enough. However, such measures might be prone to
abuse, if, for example, an attacker re-sent a large number of
messages received from a victim in order to make the victim appear to
be a spammer.
Large Verifiers might be able to detect unusually large volumes of
mails with the same signature in a short time period. Smaller
Verifiers can get substantially the same volume of information via
existing collaborative systems.
8.7. Limits on Revoking Keys
When a large domain detects undesirable behavior on the part of one
of its users, it might wish to revoke the key used to sign that
user's messages in order to disavow responsibility for messages that
have not yet been verified or that are the subject of a replay
attack. However, the ability of the domain to do so can be limited
if the same key, for scalability reasons, is used to sign messages
for many other users. Mechanisms for explicitly revoking keys on a
per-address basis have been proposed but require further study as to
their utility and the DNS load they represent.
8.8. Intentionally Malformed Key Records
It is possible for an attacker to publish key records in DNS that are
intentionally malformed, with the intent of causing a denial-of-
service attack on a non-robust Verifier implementation. The attacker
could then cause a Verifier to read the malformed key record by
sending a message to one of its users referencing the malformed
record in a (not necessarily valid) signature. Verifiers MUST
thoroughly verify all key records retrieved from the DNS and be
robust against intentionally as well as unintentionally malformed key
records.
8.9. Intentionally Malformed DKIM-Signature Header Fields
Verifiers MUST be prepared to receive messages with malformed DKIM-
Signature header fields and thoroughly verify the header field before
depending on any of its contents.
8.10. Information Leakage
An attacker could determine when a particular signature was verified
by using a per-message selector and then monitoring their DNS traffic
for the key lookup. This would act as the equivalent of a "web bug"
for verification time rather than the time the message was read.
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8.11. Remote Timing Attacks
In some cases, it may be possible to extract private keys using a
remote timing attack [BONEH03]. Implementations should consider
obfuscating the timing to prevent such attacks.
8.12. Reordered Header Fields
Existing standards allow intermediate MTAs to reorder header fields.
If a Signer signs two or more header fields of the same name, this
can cause spurious verification errors on otherwise legitimate
messages. In particular, Signers that sign any existing DKIM-
Signature fields run the risk of having messages incorrectly fail to
verify.
8.13. RSA Attacks
An attacker could create a large RSA signing key with a small
exponent, thus requiring that the verification key have a large
exponent. This will force Verifiers to use considerable computing
resources to verify the signature. Verifiers might avoid this attack
by refusing to verify signatures that reference selectors with public
keys having unreasonable exponents.
In general, an attacker might try to overwhelm a Verifier by flooding
it with messages requiring verification. This is similar to other
MTA denial-of-service attacks and should be dealt with in a similar
fashion.
8.14. Inappropriate Signing by Parent Domains
The trust relationship described in Section 3.10 could conceivably be
used by a parent domain to sign messages with identities in a
subdomain not administratively related to the parent. For example,
the ".com" registry could create messages with signatures using an
"i=" value in the example.com domain. There is no general solution
to this problem, since the administrative cut could occur anywhere in
the domain name. For example, in the domain "example.podunk.ca.us",
there are three administrative cuts (podunk.ca.us, ca.us, and us),
any of which could create messages with an identity in the full
domain.
INFORMATIVE NOTE: This is considered an acceptable risk for the
same reason that it is acceptable for domain delegation. For
example, in the case above, any of the domains could potentially
simply delegate "example.podunk.ca.us" to a server of their choice
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and completely replace all DNS-served information. Note that a
Verifier MAY ignore signatures that come from an unlikely domain
such as ".com", as discussed in Section 6.1.1.
8.15. Attacks Involving Extra Header Fields
Many email components, including MTAs, MSAs, MUAs, and filtering
modules, implement message format checks only loosely. This is done
out of years of industry pressure to be liberal in what is accepted
into the mail stream for the sake of reducing support costs;
improperly formed messages are often silently fixed in transit,
delivered unrepaired, or displayed inappropriately (e.g., by showing
only the first of multiple From: fields).
Agents that evaluate or apply DKIM output need to be aware that a
DKIM Signer can sign messages that are malformed (e.g., violate
[RFC5322], such as by having multiple instances of a field that is
only permitted once), that become malformed in transit, or that
contain header or body content that is not true or valid. Use of
DKIM on such messages might constitute an attack against a receiver,
especially where additional credence is given to a signed message
without adequate evaluation of the Signer.
These can represent serious attacks, but they have nothing to do with
DKIM; they are attacks on the recipient or on the wrongly identified
author.
Moreover, an agent would be incorrect to infer that all instances of
a header field are signed just because one is.
A genuine signature from the domain under attack can be obtained by
legitimate means, but extra header fields can then be added, either
by interception or by replay. In this scenario, DKIM can aid in
detecting addition of specific fields in transit. This is done by
having the Signer list the field name(s) in the "h=" tag an extra
time (e.g., "h=from:from:..." for a message with one From field), so
that addition of an instance of that field downstream will render the
signature unable to be verified. (See Section 3.5 for details.)
This, in essence, is an explicit indication that the Signer
repudiates responsibility for such a malformed message.
DKIM signs and validates the data it is told to and works correctly.
So in this case, DKIM has done its job of delivering a validated
domain (the "d=" value) and, given the semantics of a DKIM signature,
essentially the Signer has taken some responsibility for a
problematic message. It is up to the Identity Assessor or some other
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subsequent agent to act on such messages as needed, such as degrading
the trust of the message (or, indeed, of the Signer), warning the
recipient, or even refusing delivery.
All components of the mail system that perform loose enforcement of
other mail standards will need to revisit that posture when
incorporating DKIM, especially when considering matters of potential
attacks such as those described.
9. References
9.1. Normative References
[FIPS-180-3-2008]
U.S. Department of Commerce, "Secure Hash Standard", FIPS
PUB 180-3, October 2008.
[ITU-X660-1997]
"Information Technology - ASN.1 encoding rules:
Specification of Basic Encoding Rules (BER), Canonical
Encoding Rules (CER) and Distinguished Encoding Rules
(DER)", 1997.
[RFC1034] Mockapetris, P., "Domain names - concepts and facilities",
STD 13, RFC 1034, November 1987.
[RFC2045] Freed, N. and N. Borenstein, "Multipurpose Internet Mail
Extensions (MIME) Part One: Format of Internet Message
Bodies", RFC 2045, November 1996.
[RFC2049] Freed, N. and N. Borenstein, "Multipurpose Internet Mail
Extensions (MIME) Part Five: Conformance Criteria and
Examples", RFC 2049, November 1996.
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
[RFC3447] Jonsson, J. and B. Kaliski, "Public-Key Cryptography
Standards (PKCS) #1: RSA Cryptography Specifications
Version 2.1", RFC 3447, February 2003.
[RFC5234] Crocker, D. and P. Overell, "Augmented BNF for Syntax
Specifications: ABNF", STD 68, RFC 5234, January 2008.
[RFC5321] Klensin, J., "Simple Mail Transfer Protocol", RFC 5321,
October 2008.
Crocker, et al. Standards Track [Page 61]
RFC 6376 DKIM Signatures September 2011
[RFC5322] Resnick, P., Ed., "Internet Message Format", RFC 5322,
October 2008.
[RFC5598] Crocker, D., "Internet Mail Architecture", RFC 5598,
July 2009.
[RFC5890] Klensin, J., "Internationalized Domain Names for
Applications (IDNA): Definitions and Document Framework",
RFC 5890, August 2010.
9.2. Informative References
[BONEH03] "Remote Timing Attacks are Practical", Proceedings 12th
USENIX Security Symposium, 2003.
[RFC2047] Moore, K., "MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions)
Part Three: Message Header Extensions for Non-ASCII Text",
RFC 2047, November 1996.
[RFC3629] Yergeau, F., "UTF-8, a transformation format of ISO
10646", STD 63, RFC 3629, November 2003.
[RFC3766] Orman, H. and P. Hoffman, "Determining Strengths For
Public Keys Used For Exchanging Symmetric Keys", BCP 86,
RFC 3766, April 2004.
[RFC3833] Atkins, D. and R. Austein, "Threat Analysis of the Domain
Name System (DNS)", RFC 3833, August 2004.
[RFC3864] Klyne, G., Nottingham, M., and J. Mogul, "Registration
Procedures for Message Header Fields", BCP 90, RFC 3864,
September 2004.
[RFC4033] Arends, R., Austein, R., Larson, M., Massey, D., and S.
Rose, "DNS Security Introduction and Requirements",
RFC 4033, March 2005.
[RFC4409] Gellens, R. and J. Klensin, "Message Submission for Mail",
RFC 4409, April 2006.
[RFC4686] Fenton, J., "Analysis of Threats Motivating DomainKeys
Identified Mail (DKIM)", RFC 4686, September 2006.
[RFC4732] Handley, M., Rescorla, E., and IAB, "Internet Denial-of-
Service Considerations", RFC 4732, December 2006.
Crocker, et al. Standards Track [Page 62]
RFC 6376 DKIM Signatures September 2011
[RFC4870] Delany, M., "Domain-Based Email Authentication Using
Public Keys Advertised in the DNS (DomainKeys)", RFC 4870,
May 2007.
[RFC4871] Allman, E., Callas, J., Delany, M., Libbey, M., Fenton,
J., and M. Thomas, "DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM)
Signatures", RFC 4871, May 2007.
[RFC4880] Callas, J., Donnerhacke, L., Finney, H., Shaw, D., and R.
Thayer, "OpenPGP Message Format", RFC 4880, November 2007.
[RFC5226] Narten, T. and H. Alvestrand, "Guidelines for Writing an
IANA Considerations Section in RFCs", BCP 26, RFC 5226,
May 2008.
[RFC5451] Kucherawy, M., "Message Header Field for Indicating
Message Authentication Status", RFC 5451, April 2009.
[RFC5585] Hansen, T., Crocker, D., and P. Hallam-Baker, "DomainKeys
Identified Mail (DKIM) Service Overview", RFC 5585,
July 2009.
[RFC5672] Crocker, D., "RFC 4871 DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM)
Signatures -- Update", RFC 5672, August 2009.
[RFC5751] Ramsdell, B. and S. Turner, "Secure/Multipurpose Internet
Mail Extensions (S/MIME) Version 3.2 Message
Specification", RFC 5751, January 2010.
[RFC5863] Hansen, T., Siegel, E., Hallam-Baker, P., and D. Crocker,
"DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) Development,
Deployment, and Operations", RFC 5863, May 2010.
[RFC6377] Kucherawy, M., "DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) and
Mailing Lists", RFC 6377, September 2011.
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Appendix A. Example of Use (INFORMATIVE)
This section shows the complete flow of an email from submission to
final delivery, demonstrating how the various components fit
together. The key used in this example is shown in Appendix C.
A.1. The User Composes an Email
From: Joe SixPack <joe@football.example.com>
To: Suzie Q <suzie@shopping.example.net>
Subject: Is dinner ready?
Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2003 21:00:37 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <20030712040037.46341.5F8J@football.example.com>
Hi.
We lost the game. Are you hungry yet?
Joe.
Figure 1: The User Composes an Email
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A.2. The Email is Signed
This email is signed by the example.com outbound email server and now
looks like this:
DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; s=brisbane; d=example.com;
c=simple/simple; q=dns/txt; i=joe@football.example.com;
h=Received : From : To : Subject : Date : Message-ID;
bh=2jUSOH9NhtVGCQWNr9BrIAPreKQjO6Sn7XIkfJVOzv8=;
b=AuUoFEfDxTDkHlLXSZEpZj79LICEps6eda7W3deTVFOk4yAUoqOB
4nujc7YopdG5dWLSdNg6xNAZpOPr+kHxt1IrE+NahM6L/LbvaHut
KVdkLLkpVaVVQPzeRDI009SO2Il5Lu7rDNH6mZckBdrIx0orEtZV
4bmp/YzhwvcubU4=;
Received: from client1.football.example.com [192.0.2.1]
by submitserver.example.com with SUBMISSION;
Fri, 11 Jul 2003 21:01:54 -0700 (PDT)
From: Joe SixPack <joe@football.example.com>
To: Suzie Q <suzie@shopping.example.net>
Subject: Is dinner ready?
Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2003 21:00:37 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <20030712040037.46341.5F8J@football.example.com>
Hi.
We lost the game. Are you hungry yet?
Joe.
Figure 2: The Email is Signed
The signing email server requires access to the private key
associated with the "brisbane" selector to generate this signature.
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A.3. The Email Signature is Verified
The signature is normally verified by an inbound SMTP server or
possibly the final delivery agent. However, intervening MTAs can
also perform this verification if they choose to do so. The
verification process uses the domain "example.com" extracted from the
"d=" tag and the selector "brisbane" from the "s=" tag in the DKIM-
Signature header field to form the DNS DKIM query for:
brisbane._domainkey.example.com
Signature verification starts with the physically last Received
header field, the From header field, and so forth, in the order
listed in the "h=" tag. Verification follows with a single CRLF
followed by the body (starting with "Hi."). The email is canonically
prepared for verifying with the "simple" method. The result of the
query and subsequent verification of the signature is stored (in this
example) in the X-Authentication-Results header field line. After
successful verification, the email looks like this:
X-Authentication-Results: shopping.example.net
header.from=joe@football.example.com; dkim=pass
Received: from mout23.football.example.com (192.168.1.1)
by shopping.example.net with SMTP;
Fri, 11 Jul 2003 21:01:59 -0700 (PDT)
DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; s=brisbane; d=example.com;
c=simple/simple; q=dns/txt; i=joe@football.example.com;
h=Received : From : To : Subject : Date : Message-ID;
bh=2jUSOH9NhtVGCQWNr9BrIAPreKQjO6Sn7XIkfJVOzv8=;
b=AuUoFEfDxTDkHlLXSZEpZj79LICEps6eda7W3deTVFOk4yAUoqOB
4nujc7YopdG5dWLSdNg6xNAZpOPr+kHxt1IrE+NahM6L/LbvaHut
KVdkLLkpVaVVQPzeRDI009SO2Il5Lu7rDNH6mZckBdrIx0orEtZV
4bmp/YzhwvcubU4=;
Received: from client1.football.example.com [192.0.2.1]
by submitserver.example.com with SUBMISSION;
Fri, 11 Jul 2003 21:01:54 -0700 (PDT)
From: Joe SixPack <joe@football.example.com>
To: Suzie Q <suzie@shopping.example.net>
Subject: Is dinner ready?
Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2003 21:00:37 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <20030712040037.46341.5F8J@football.example.com>
Hi.
We lost the game. Are you hungry yet?
Joe.
Figure 3: Successful Verification
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Appendix B. Usage Examples (INFORMATIVE)
DKIM signing and validating can be used in different ways, for
different operational scenarios. This Appendix discusses some common
examples.
NOTE: Descriptions in this Appendix are for informational purposes
only. They describe various ways that DKIM can be used, given
particular constraints and needs. In no case are these examples
intended to be taken as providing explanation or guidance
concerning DKIM specification details when creating an
implementation.
B.1. Alternate Submission Scenarios
In the most simple scenario, a user's MUA, MSA, and Internet
(boundary) MTA are all within the same administrative environment,
using the same domain name. Therefore, all of the components
involved in submission and initial transfer are related. However, it
is common for two or more of the components to be under independent
administrative control. This creates challenges for choosing and
administering the domain name to use for signing and for its
relationship to common email identity header fields.
B.1.1. Delegated Business Functions
Some organizations assign specific business functions to discrete
groups, inside or outside the organization. The goal, then, is to
authorize that group to sign some mail but to constrain what
signatures they can generate. DKIM selectors (the "s=" signature
tag) facilitate this kind of restricted authorization. Examples of
these outsourced business functions are legitimate email marketing
providers and corporate benefits providers.
Here, the delegated group needs to be able to send messages that are
signed, using the email domain of the client company. At the same
time, the client often is reluctant to register a key for the
provider that grants the ability to send messages for arbitrary
addresses in the domain.
There are multiple ways to administer these usage scenarios. In one
case, the client organization provides all of the public query
service (for example, DNS) administration, and in another, it uses
DNS delegation to enable all ongoing administration of the DKIM key
record by the delegated group.
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If the client organization retains responsibility for all of the DNS
administration, the outsourcing company can generate a key pair,
supplying the public key to the client company, which then registers
it in the query service using a unique selector. The client company
retains control over the use of the delegated key because it retains
the ability to revoke the key at any time.
If the client wants the delegated group to do the DNS administration,
it can have the domain name that is specified with the selector point
to the provider's DNS server. The provider then creates and
maintains all of the DKIM signature information for that selector.
Hence, the client cannot provide constraints on the local-part of
addresses that get signed, but it can revoke the provider's signing
rights by removing the DNS delegation record.
B.1.2. PDAs and Similar Devices
PDAs demonstrate the need for using multiple keys per domain.
Suppose that John Doe wants to be able to send messages using his
corporate email address, jdoe@example.com, and his email device does
not have the ability to make a Virtual Private Network (VPN)
connection to the corporate network, either because the device is
limited or because there are restrictions enforced by his Internet
access provider. If the device is equipped with a private key
registered for jdoe@example.com by the administrator of the
example.com domain and appropriate software to sign messages, John
could sign the message on the device itself before transmission
through the outgoing network of the access service provider.
B.1.3. Roaming Users
Roaming users often find themselves in circumstances where it is
convenient or necessary to use an SMTP server other than their home
server; examples are conferences and many hotels. In such
circumstances, a signature that is added by the submission service
will use an identity that is different from the user's home system.
Ideally, roaming users would connect back to their home server using
either a VPN or a SUBMISSION server running with SMTP AUTHentication
on port 587. If the signing can be performed on the roaming user's
laptop, then they can sign before submission, although the risk of
further modification is high. If neither of these are possible,
these roaming users will not be able to send mail signed using their
own domain key.
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B.1.4. Independent (Kiosk) Message Submission
Stand-alone services, such as walk-up kiosks and web-based
information services, have no enduring email service relationship
with the user, but users occasionally request that mail be sent on
their behalf. For example, a website providing news often allows the
reader to forward a copy of the article to a friend. This is
typically done using the reader's own email address, to indicate who
the author is. This is sometimes referred to as the "Evite" problem,
named after the website of the same name that allows a user to send
invitations to friends.
A common way this is handled is to continue to put the reader's email
address in the From header field of the message but put an address
owned by the email posting site into the Sender header field. The
posting site can then sign the message, using the domain that is in
the Sender field. This provides useful information to the receiving
email site, which is able to correlate the signing domain with the
initial submission email role.
Receiving sites often wish to provide their end users with
information about mail that is mediated in this fashion. Although
the real efficacy of different approaches is a subject for human
factors usability research, one technique that is used is for the
verifying system to rewrite the From header field to indicate the
address that was verified, for example: From: John Doe via
news@news-site.example <jdoe@example.com>. (Note that such rewriting
will break a signature, unless it is done after the verification pass
is complete.)
B.2. Alternate Delivery Scenarios
Email is often received at a mailbox that has an address different
from the one used during initial submission. In these cases, an
intermediary mechanism operates at the address originally used, and
it then passes the message on to the final destination. This
mediation process presents some challenges for DKIM signatures.
B.2.1. Affinity Addresses
"Affinity addresses" allow a user to have an email address that
remains stable, even as the user moves among different email
providers. They are typically associated with college alumni
associations, professional organizations, and recreational
organizations with which they expect to have a long-term
relationship. These domains usually provide forwarding of incoming
email, and they often have an associated Web application that
authenticates the user and allows the forwarding address to be
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changed. However, these services usually depend on users sending
outgoing messages through their own service provider's MTAs. Hence,
mail that is signed with the domain of the affinity address is not
signed by an entity that is administered by the organization owning
that domain.
With DKIM, affinity domains could use the Web application to allow
users to register per-user keys to be used to sign messages on behalf
of their affinity address. The user would take away the secret half
of the key pair for signing, and the affinity domain would publish
the public half in DNS for access by Verifiers.
This is another application that takes advantage of user-level
keying, and domains used for affinity addresses would typically have
a very large number of user-level keys. Alternatively, the affinity
domain could handle outgoing mail, operating a mail submission agent
that authenticates users before accepting and signing messages for
them. This is, of course, dependent on the user's service provider
not blocking the relevant TCP ports used for mail submission.
B.2.2. Simple Address Aliasing (.forward)
In some cases, a recipient is allowed to configure an email address
to cause automatic redirection of email messages from the original
address to another, such as through the use of a Unix .forward file.
In this case, messages are typically redirected by the mail handling
service of the recipient's domain, without modification, except for
the addition of a Received header field to the message and a change
in the envelope recipient address. In this case, the recipient at
the final address' mailbox is likely to be able to verify the
original signature since the signed content has not changed, and DKIM
is able to validate the message signature.
B.2.3. Mailing Lists and Re-Posters
There is a wide range of behaviors in services that take delivery of
a message and then resubmit it. A primary example is with mailing
lists (collectively called "forwarders" below), ranging from those
that make no modification to the message itself, other than to add a
Received header field and change the envelope information, to those
that add header fields, change the Subject header field, add content
to the body (typically at the end), or reformat the body in some
manner. The simple ones produce messages that are quite similar to
the automated alias services. More elaborate systems essentially
create a new message.
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RFC 6376 DKIM Signatures September 2011
A Forwarder that does not modify the body or signed header fields of
a message is likely to maintain the validity of the existing
signature. It also could choose to add its own signature to the
message.
Forwarders that modify a message in a way that could make an existing
signature invalid are particularly good candidates for adding their
own signatures (e.g., mailing-list-name@example.net). Since
(re-)signing is taking responsibility for the content of the message,
these signing forwarders are likely to be selective and forward or
re-sign a message only if it is received with a valid signature or if
they have some other basis for knowing that the message is not
spoofed.
A common practice among systems that are primarily redistributors of
mail is to add a Sender header field to the message to identify the
address being used to sign the message. This practice will remove
any preexisting Sender header field as required by [RFC5322]. The
forwarder applies a new DKIM-Signature header field with the
signature, public key, and related information of the forwarder.
See [RFC6377] for additional related topics and discussion.
Appendix C. Creating a Public Key (INFORMATIVE)
The default signature is an RSA-signed SHA-256 digest of the complete
email. For ease of explanation, the openssl command is used to
describe the mechanism by which keys and signatures are managed. One
way to generate a 1024-bit, unencrypted private key suitable for DKIM
is to use openssl like this:
$ openssl genrsa -out rsa.private 1024
For increased security, the "-passin" parameter can also be added to
encrypt the private key. Use of this parameter will require entering
a password for several of the following steps. Servers may prefer to
use hardware cryptographic support.
The "genrsa" step results in the file rsa.private containing the key
information similar to this:
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RFC 6376 DKIM Signatures September 2011
-----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----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-----END RSA PRIVATE KEY-----
To extract the public-key component from the private key, use openssl
like this:
$ openssl rsa -in rsa.private -out rsa.public -pubout -outform PEM
This results in the file rsa.public containing the key information
similar to this:
-----BEGIN PUBLIC KEY-----
MIGfMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUAA4GNADCBiQKBgQDwIRP/UC3SBsEmGqZ9ZJW3/DkM
oGeLnQg1fWn7/zYtIxN2SnFCjxOCKG9v3b4jYfcTNh5ijSsq631uBItLa7od+v/R
tdC2UzJ1lWT947qR+Rcac2gbto/NMqJ0fzfVjH4OuKhitdY9tf6mcwGjaNBcWToI
MmPSPDdQPNUYckcQ2QIDAQAB
-----END PUBLIC KEY-----
This public-key data (without the BEGIN and END tags) is placed in
the DNS:
$ORIGIN _domainkey.example.org.
brisbane IN TXT ("v=DKIM1; p=MIGfMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUAA4GNADCBiQ"
"KBgQDwIRP/UC3SBsEmGqZ9ZJW3/DkMoGeLnQg1fWn7/zYt"
"IxN2SnFCjxOCKG9v3b4jYfcTNh5ijSsq631uBItLa7od+v"
"/RtdC2UzJ1lWT947qR+Rcac2gbto/NMqJ0fzfVjH4OuKhi"
"tdY9tf6mcwGjaNBcWToIMmPSPDdQPNUYckcQ2QIDAQAB")
C.1. Compatibility with DomainKeys Key Records
DKIM key records were designed to be backward compatible in many
cases with key records used by DomainKeys [RFC4870] (sometimes
referred to as "selector records" in the DomainKeys context). One
area of incompatibility warrants particular attention. The "g=" tag
value may be used in DomainKeys and [RFC4871] key records to provide
Crocker, et al. Standards Track [Page 72]
RFC 6376 DKIM Signatures September 2011
finer granularity of the validity of the key record to a specific
local-part. A null "g=" value in DomainKeys is valid for all
addresses in the domain. This differs from the usage in the original
DKIM specification ([RFC4871]), where a null "g=" value is not valid
for any address. In particular, see the example public-key record in
Section 3.2.3 of [RFC4870].
C.2. RFC 4871 Compatibility
Although the "g=" tag has been deprecated in this version of the DKIM
specification (and thus MUST now be ignored), Signers are advised not
to include the "g=" tag in key records because some [RFC4871]-
compliant Verifiers will be in use for a considerable period to come.
Appendix D. MUA Considerations (INFORMATIVE)
When a DKIM signature is verified, the processing system sometimes
makes the result available to the recipient user's MUA. How to
present this information to users in a way that helps them is a
matter of continuing human factors usability research. The tendency
is to have the MUA highlight the SDID, in an attempt to show the user
the identity that is claiming responsibility for the message. An MUA
might do this with visual cues such as graphics, might include the
address in an alternate view, or might even rewrite the original From
address using the verified information. Some MUAs might indicate
which header fields were protected by the validated DKIM signature.
This could be done with a positive indication on the signed header
fields, with a negative indication on the unsigned header fields, by
visually hiding the unsigned header fields, or some combination of
these. If an MUA uses visual indications for signed header fields,
the MUA probably needs to be careful not to display unsigned header
fields in a way that might be construed by the end user as having
been signed. If the message has an "l=" tag whose value does not
extend to the end of the message, the MUA might also hide or mark the
portion of the message body that was not signed.
The aforementioned information is not intended to be exhaustive. The
MUA can choose to highlight, accentuate, hide, or otherwise display
any other information that may, in the opinion of the MUA author, be
deemed important to the end user.
Appendix E. Changes since RFC 4871
o Abstract and introduction refined based on accumulated experience.
o Various references updated.
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RFC 6376 DKIM Signatures September 2011
o Several errata resolved (see http://www.rfc-editor.org/):
* 1376 applied
* 1377 applied
* 1378 applied
* 1379 applied
* 1380 applied
* 1381 applied
* 1382 applied
* 1383 discarded (no longer applies)
* 1384 applied
* 1386 applied
* 1461 applied
* 1487 applied
* 1532 applied
* 1596 applied
o Introductory section enumerating relevant architectural documents
added.
o Introductory section briefly discussing the matter of data
integrity added.
o Allowed tolerance of some clock drift.
o Dropped "g=" tag from key records. The implementation report
indicates that it is not in use.
o Removed errant note about wildcards in the DNS.
o Removed SMTP-specific advice in most places.
o Reduced (non-normative) recommended signature content list, and
reworked the text in that section.
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RFC 6376 DKIM Signatures September 2011
o Clarified signature generation algorithm by rewriting its pseudo-
code.
o Numerous terminology subsections added, imported from [RFC5672].
Also, began using these terms throughout the document (e.g., SDID,
AUID).
o Sections added that specify input and output requirements. Input
requirements address a security concern raised by the working
group (see also new sections in Security Considerations). Output
requirements are imported from [RFC5672].
o Appendix subsection added discussing compatibility with DomainKeys
([RFC4870]) records.
o Referred to [RFC5451] as an example method of communicating the
results of DKIM verification.
o Removed advice about possible uses of the "l=" signature tag.
o IANA registry updated.
o Added two new Security Considerations sections talking about
malformed message attacks.
o Various copy editing.
Appendix F. Acknowledgments
The previous IETF version of DKIM [RFC4871] was edited by Eric
Allman, Jon Callas, Mark Delany, Miles Libbey, Jim Fenton, and
Michael Thomas.
That specification was the result of an extended collaborative
effort, including participation by Russ Allbery, Edwin Aoki, Claus
Assmann, Steve Atkins, Rob Austein, Fred Baker, Mark Baugher, Steve
Bellovin, Nathaniel Borenstein, Dave Crocker, Michael Cudahy, Dennis
Dayman, Jutta Degener, Frank Ellermann, Patrik Faeltstroem, Mark
Fanto, Stephen Farrell, Duncan Findlay, Elliot Gillum, Olafur
Gudmundsson, Phillip Hallam-Baker, Tony Hansen, Sam Hartman, Arvel
Hathcock, Amir Herzberg, Paul Hoffman, Russ Housley, Craig Hughes,
Cullen Jennings, Don Johnsen, Harry Katz, Murray S. Kucherawy, Barry
Leiba, John Levine, Charles Lindsey, Simon Longsdale, David Margrave,
Justin Mason, David Mayne, Thierry Moreau, Steve Murphy, Russell
Nelson, Dave Oran, Doug Otis, Shamim Pirzada, Juan Altmayer Pizzorno,
Sanjay Pol, Blake Ramsdell, Christian Renaud, Scott Renfro, Neil
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RFC 6376 DKIM Signatures September 2011
Rerup, Eric Rescorla, Dave Rossetti, Hector Santos, Jim Schaad, the
Spamhaus.org team, Malte S. Stretz, Robert Sanders, Rand Wacker, Sam
Weiler, and Dan Wing.
The earlier DomainKeys was a primary source from which DKIM was
derived. Further information about DomainKeys is at [RFC4870].
This revision received contributions from Steve Atkins, Mark Delany,
J.D. Falk, Jim Fenton, Michael Hammer, Barry Leiba, John Levine,
Charles Lindsey, Jeff Macdonald, Franck Martin, Brett McDowell, Doug
Otis, Bill Oxley, Hector Santos, Rolf Sonneveld, Michael Thomas, and
Alessandro Vesely.
Authors' Addresses
Dave Crocker (editor)
Brandenburg InternetWorking
675 Spruce Dr.
Sunnyvale, CA 94086
USA
Phone: +1.408.246.8253
EMail: dcrocker@bbiw.net
URI: http://bbiw.net
Tony Hansen (editor)
AT&T Laboratories
200 Laurel Ave. South
Middletown, NJ 07748
USA
EMail: tony+dkimsig@maillennium.att.com
Murray S. Kucherawy (editor)
Cloudmark
128 King St., 2nd Floor
San Francisco, CA 94107
USA
EMail: msk@cloudmark.com
Crocker, et al. Standards Track [Page 76]
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