Use of SRV Records for Locating Email Submission/Access services
draft-daboo-srv-email-04

Abstract

This specification describes how SRV records can be used to locate email services.

Status of This Memo

This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet- Drafts is at http:/⁠/⁠datatracker.ietf.org/⁠drafts/⁠current/⁠.

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This Internet-Draft will expire on April 19, 2013.

Copyright Notice

Copyright (c) 2012 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved.

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.

Table of Contents

• 1. Introduction
• 2. Conventions Used in This Document
• 3. SRV Service Labels
• 3.1. Email Submission
• 3.2. IMAP
• 3.3. POP3
• 3.4. Priority for Domain Preferences
• 4. Guidance for MUAs
• 5. Guidance for Service Providers
• 6. Security Considerations
• 7. IANA Considerations
• 8. Acknowledgments
• 9. References
• 9.1. Normative References
• 9.2. Informative References
• Appendix A. Change History (to be removed prior to publication as an RFC)
• Author's Address

1. Introduction

Internet Email protocols include SMTP [RFC5321], IMAP [RFC3501] and POP3 [RFC1939]. IMAP and POP3 are both message store access protocols used by message store user agents (MUAs) to manipulate email messages after delivery. [RFC4409] defines a "profile" of the SMTP service that is specifically used for message submission. MUAs are expected to submit messages to mail submission agents (MSAs) using this approach.

[RFC2782] defines a DNS-based service discovery protocol that has been widely adopted as a means of locating particular services within a local area network and beyond, using DNS SRV Resource Records (RRs).

[RFC5321] specifies how to use DNS MX RRs to locate SMTP services for a domain. However, MUAs are expected to use the submission protocol defined in [RFC4409] which does not use MX records.

Typically MUAs have required users to enter a fully qualified domain name (FQDN) and port information for the services they need. This is not ideal as the way in which server configuration information is specified can differ from MUA to MUA, and can be confusing to users, leading to errors when inputting the details. Alternatively, some MUAs have adopted a complex "auto-discovery" process involving probing a domain to see what services might be available. A better approach to all this would be to require minimal information to be entered by a user which would result in automatic configuration of appropriate services for that user. The minimal information entered would be the user's email address.

This specification defines new SRV service types for the message submission, IMAP and POP3 services, to enable simple auto-configuration of MUAs. The priority field of the SRV record can also be used to indicate a preference for one message store access protocol over another.

2. Conventions Used in This Document

The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119].

Email-related terminology from [RFC5598] is used.

3. SRV Service Labels

3.1. Email Submission

This specification adds one SRV service label for message submission [RFC4409]:

submission:

Identifies an MSA using [RFC4409]. Note that this covers connections both with and without transport layer security [RFC3207].

Example: service record

    _submission._tcp     SRV 0 1 587 mail.example.com.
					

3.2. IMAP

This specification adds two SRV service labels for IMAP [RFC3501]:

_imap:

Identifies an IMAP server that MAY advertise the "LOGINDISABLED" capability and MAY require the MUA to use the "STARTTLS" command prior to authentication. Although these two extensions are mandatory-to-implement for both MUAs and IMAP servers, they are not mandatory-to-use by service providers.

_imaps:

Identifies an IMAP server where transport layer security is initiated directly upon connection to the IMAP server.

Example: service record

    _imap._tcp     SRV 0 1 143 imap.example.com.
					

Example: service record

    _imaps._tcp    SRV 0 1 993 imap.example.com.
					

3.3. POP3

This specification adds two SRV service labels for POP3 [RFC1939]:

_pop3:

Identifies a POP3 server that MAY require the MUA to use the "STLS" extension command [RFC2595] prior to authentication.

_pop3s:

Identifies a POP3 server where transport layer security is initiated directly upon connection to the POP3 server.

Example: service record

    _pop3._tcp     SRV 0 1 110 pop3.example.com.
					

Example: service record

    _pop3s._tcp    SRV 0 1 995 pop3.example.com.
					

3.4. Priority for Domain Preferences

The priority field in the SRV RR allows a domain to indicate that some records have a higher preference than others in the DNS query results (determined by those records having a lower priority value). Typically, this is used for choosing a record from a set for a single service label, however it is not restricted to choice within only one service.

Often a site will offer both IMAP and POP3 message store access services for users. However, the site may have a preference for one over the other that they want to convey to the user to ensure that, when the user has an MUA capable of using both IMAP and POP3, that the preferred choice is used.

To aid with this choice, sites SHOULD offer both sets of IMAP (_imap and _imaps) and POP3 (_po3 and/or _pop3s) SRV records in their DNS and set the priority for those sets of records such that the "preferred" service has a lower priority value than the other. When an MUA supports both IMAP and POP3 it SHOULD retrieve records for both services and then use the service with the lowest priority value. If the priority is the same for both services, MUAs are free to choose which ever one is appropriate.

Example: service records for both IMAP and POP3, with IMAP having a lower priority value (0) then POP3 (10), indicating to the MUA that IMAP is preferred over POP3, when the MUA can support either service.

    _imap._tcp     SRV  0 1 143 imap.example.com.
    _pop3._tcp     SRV 10 1 110 pop3.example.com.
					

4. Guidance for MUAs

By using SRV records as above, MUAs need initially only prompt the user for their email address [RFC5322]. The "local-part" and "domain" portions are then extracted from the email address by the MUA. The MUA uses the "domain" portion as the service domain to perform SRV lookups for the services it wants to configure. If the SRV lookup is successful the target FQDN and port for the service can be determined and used to complete MUA configuration. If an SRV record is not found, the MUA will need to prompt the user to enter the FQDN and port information directly, or use some other heuristic. In the case of multiple SRV records returned for a particular service, the MUA MUST use the priority and weight fields in the record to determine which one to use (as per [RFC2782]).

MUAs that support both POP3 and IMAP use the procedure in Section 3.4 to choose between each service when both are offered.

Subsequent to configuration, the MUA will connect to the service. When using "imaps" or "pop3s" services, a transport layer security negotiation is done immediately upon connection. With "imap", "pop3" and "submission" services, the "STARTTLS", "STLS" and "STARTTLS" commands respectively are used to initiate a protected connection. When using transport layer security in this way, MUAs SHOULD use the TLS Server Name Indication [RFC5246]. Certificate verification MUST use the procedure outlined in Section 4.3 of [I-D.saintandre-tls-server-id-check] in regard to verification with an SRV RR as the starting point.

Once a suitable connection has been made, and any required protection setup, the MUA will typically need to authenticate with the IMAP, POP3 or SMTP (submission) server. The details of that are governed by the specific protocols themselves, though often times a "user identifier" is required for some form of user/password authentication. When a user identifier is required, MUAs MUST first use the full email address provided by the user, and if that results in an authentication failure, SHOULD fall back to using the "local-part" extracted from the email address. This is in line with the guidance outlined in Section 5. If both these user identifiers result in authentication failure, the MUA SHOULD prompt the user for a valid identifier.

Once a successful connection and authentication have been done, MUAs SHOULD cache the service details (hostname, port, user identity) that were successfully used, and re-use those when connecting again at a later time. However, if a subsequent connection attempt fails, or authentication fails, MUAs SHOULD re-try the SRV lookup to "refresh" the cached data.

5. Guidance for Service Providers

Service providers wanting to offer IMAP, POP3 or SMTP (submission) services that can be configured by MUAs using SRV records need to follow certain guidelines to ensure proper operation.

1. IMAP, POP3 and SMTP (submission) servers SHOULD be configured to allow authentication with email addresses or email local-parts. In the former case, the email addresses MUST NOT conflict with other forms of permitted user login name. In the latter case, the email local-parts need to be unique across the server and MUST NOT conflict with any login name on the server.
2. If the service provider uses transport layer security, the service provider MUST ensure a certificate is installed that can be verified by MUAs using the procedure outlined in Section 4.3 of [I-D.saintandre-tls-server-id-check] in regard to verification with an SRV RR as the starting point. If the service provider hosts multiple domains on the same IP address, then the service provider MUST enable support for the TLS Server Name Indication [RFC5246].
3. Install the appropriate SRV records for the offered services.

6. Security Considerations

If a user has explicitly requested a connection with transport layer security (user interfaces sometimes present this choice as a "use SSL" or "secure connection" checkbox), the MUA MUST successfully negotiate transport layer security prior to sending an authentication command. The MUA MAY do this with "imaps", "pop3s", "imap" with "STARTTLS", or "pop3" with "STLS". Service providers MAY offer any subset of these four options for the mail service.

A malicious attacker with access to the DNS server data, or able to get spoofed answers cached in a recursive resolver, can potentially cause MUAs to connect to any IMAP, POP3 or submission server chosen by the attacker. In the absence of a secure DNS option, MUAs SHOULD check that the target FQDN returned in the SRV record matches the original service domain that was queried. If the target FQDN is not in the queried domain, MUAs SHOULD verify with the user that the SRV target FQDN is suitable for use before executing any connections to the host. Alternatively, if transport layer security is being used for the email service, MUAs MUST use the procedure outlined in Section 4.3 of [I-D.saintandre-tls-server-id-check] to verify the service.

7. IANA Considerations

This document does not require any actions on the part of IANA.

8. Acknowledgments

Thanks to Tony Finch, Ned Freed, Alfred Hoenes, Suresh Krishnan, Alexey Melnikov, and Chris Newman for feedback and suggestions. Some of this work is based on a previous internet draft by John Klensin and Eric Hall.

9. References

9.1. Normative References

9.2. Informative References

Appendix A. Change History (to be removed prior to publication as an RFC)

Changes in -04:

1. Updated reference to draft-saintandre-tls-server-id-check.
2. Tweaked 3.4 to indicate that the _XXXs variants of service type are also included in the "weighting" approach.
3. Tweaked Acknowledgments.

Changes in -03:

1. Added ability to use priority to select one access protocol over another.
2. Added statement that clients should retry SRV on subsequent connection failure.
3. Added statement about handling multiple records for the same service.
4. Stronger use of MUST NOT in Section 5(a).
5. GENART: Added statement that clients should prompt the user if both email and local-part authentication fail.
6. Tweaked title.
7. "Service type" -> "Service label"
8. "Host name" -> "target FQDN"
9. Improvements to security considerations wrt DNS attacks.
10. MUA and service provider guidance now includes submission service.
11. Added References to draft-saintandre-tls-server-id-check that should define the proper cert validation procedures.
12. SECDIR: reworked introduction.
13. Switched to using terminology from RFC5598.

Changes in -02:

1. Tweaked text for imap to better describe mandatory-to-implement behavior from base spec.
2. Tweaked text for pop3 along similar lines as imap.
3. Teaked security considerations to account for use of STARTTLS and STLS.
4. Added examples for imaps and pop3s.
5. Re-worked client guidelines.
6. Added service provider guidelines.

Changes in -01:

1. Tweaked text for pop3 to make it clearer that STLS is an extension.
2. Added text to explain that the email address, as well as the local-part, may be used as the user identifier.
3. Tweaked security considerations to account for use of STARTTLS and STLS.

Author's Address