| Network Working Group | S. Kitterman |
| Internet-Draft | Kitterman Technical Services |
| Obsoletes: 4408 (if approved) | 2013 |
| Intended status: Standards Track | |
| Expires: December 25, 2016 |
Sender Policy Framework (SPF) for Authorizing Use of Domains in Email, Version 1
draft-ietf-spfbis-4408bis-13.txt
Email on the Internet can be forged in a number of ways. In particular, existing protocols place no restriction on what a sending host can use as the "MAIL FROM" of a message or the domain given on the SMTP HELO/EHLO commands. This document describes version 1 of the Sender Policy Framework (SPF) protocol, whereby an ADMD can explicitly authorize the hosts that are allowed to use its domain names, and a receiving host can check such authorization.
This document obsoletes RFC4408.
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 December 25, 2016.
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The current email infrastructure has the property that any host injecting mail into the system can use any DNS domain name it wants in each of the various identifiers specified by [RFC5321] and [RFC5322]. Although this feature is desirable in some circumstances, it is a major obstacle to reducing Unsolicited Bulk Email (UBE, aka spam). Furthermore, many domain owning ADMDs (ADministrative Management Domains, see [RFC5598]) are understandably concerned about the ease with which other entities can make use of their domain names, often with malicious intent.
This document defines a protocol by which ADMDs can authorize hosts to use their domain names in the "MAIL FROM" or "HELO" identities. Compliant ADMDs publish Sender Policy Framework (SPF) records in the DNS specifying which hosts are permitted to use their names, and compliant mail receivers use the published SPF records to test the authorization of sending Mail Transfer Agents (MTAs) using a given "HELO" or "MAIL FROM" identity during a mail transaction.
An additional benefit to mail receivers is that after the use of an identity is verified, local policy decisions about the mail can be made based on the sender's domain, rather than the host's IP address. This is advantageous because reputation of domain names is likely to be more accurate than reputation of host IP addresses. Furthermore, if a claimed identity fails verification, local policy can take stronger action against such email, such as rejecting it.
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].
The ABNF tokens "ALPHA", "DIGIT", and "SP" are defined in [RFC5234].
The token "local-part" is defined in [RFC5321].
"dot-atom", "quoted-string", "comment", "CFWS", "FWS", and "CRLF" are defined in [RFC5322].
This document is concerned with the portion of a mail message commonly called "envelope sender", "return path", "reverse path", "bounce address", "5321 FROM", "MAIL FROM", or RFC5321.MailFrom. Since these terms are either not well defined or often used casually, this document uses "MAIL FROM" for consistency. This means the RFC5321.MailFrom as defined in [RFC5598]. Note that other terms that might superficially look like the common terms, such as "reverse-path", are used only with the defined meanings from normative documents.
This document also makes use of the HELO/EHLO identity. The "HELO" identity derives from either the SMTP HELO or EHLO command (see [RFC5321]). Since HELO and EHLO can, in many cases, be used interchangeably, they are identified commonly as "HELO" in this document. This means RFC5321.HELO/.EHLO as defined in [RFC5598]. These commands supply the identity of the SMTP client (sending host) for the SMTP session.
Section 4 introduces an algorithm to evaluate an SPF policy against an arriving email transaction. In an early implementation, this algorithm was encoded in a function called check_host(). That name is used in this document as symbolic of the SPF evaluation algorithm, but of course implementers are not required to use this name.
It is RECOMMENDED that SPF verifiers not only check the "MAIL FROM" identity, but also separately check the "HELO" identity by applying the check_host() function (Section 4) to the "HELO" identity as the <sender>. Checking "HELO" promotes consistency of results and can reduce DNS resource usage. Additionally, since SPF records published for "HELO" identities refer to a single host, when available, they are a very reliable source of host authorization status.
Note that requirements for the domain presented in the EHLO or HELO command are not always clear to the sending party, and SPF verifiers MUST be prepared for the "HELO" identity to be malformed or an IP address literal. This SPF check can only be performed when the "HELO" string is a valid fully qualified domain.
SPF verifiers MUST check the ""MAIL FROM" identity if a completed "HELO" check has not reached a definitive policy result by applying the check_host() function to the "MAIL FROM" identity as the <sender>.
[RFC5321] allows the reverse-path to be null (see Section 4.5.5 in [RFC5321]). In this case, there is no explicit sender mailbox, and such a message can be assumed to be a notification message from the mail system itself. When the reverse-path is null, this document defines the "MAIL FROM" identity to be the mailbox composed of the local-part "postmaster" and the "HELO" identity (which might or might not have been checked separately before).
An SPF-compliant domain MUST have valid SPF records as described in Section 3. These records authorize the use of the relevant domain names in the "HELO" and "MAIL FROM" identities by the MTAs specified therein.
SPF results can be used to make both positive (source is authorized) and negative (source is not authorized) determinations. If domain owners choose to publish SPF records and want to support receivers making negative authorization determinations, then they MUST publish records that end in "-all", or redirect to other records that do, otherwise, no definitive determination of authorization can be made. Potential issues and mitigations associated with negative determinations are discussed in Section 10.
ADMDs can publish SPF records that explicitly authorize no hosts for domain names that are neither used in the domain part of email addresses nor expected to originate mail.
When changing SPF records, care has to be taken to ensure that there is a transition period so that the old policy remains valid until all legitimate email can reasonably expect to have been checked. [RFC5321] Section 4.5.4.1 discusses how long a message might be in transit. While offline checks are possible, the closer to the original transmission time checks are performed, the more likely they are to get an SPF result that matches the sending ADMD intent at the time the message was sent.
A mail receiver can perform a set of SPF checks for each mail message it receives. An SPF check tests the authorization of a client host to emit mail with a given identity. Typically, such checks are done by a receiving MTA, but can be performed elsewhere in the mail processing chain so long as the required information is available and reliable. At least the "MAIL FROM" identity MUST be checked, but it is RECOMMENDED that the "HELO" identity also be checked beforehand.
Without explicit approval of the domain owner, checking other identities against SPF version 1 records is NOT RECOMMENDED because there are cases that are known to give incorrect results. For example, almost all mailing lists rewrite the "MAIL FROM" identity (see Section 10.3), but some do not change any other identities in the message. Documents that define other identities will have to define the method for explicit approval.
It is possible that mail receivers will use the SPF check as part of a larger set of tests on incoming mail. The results of other tests might influence whether or not a particular SPF check is performed. For example, finding the sending host's IP address on a local white list might cause all other tests to be skipped and all mail from that host to be accepted.
When a mail receiver decides to perform an SPF check, it MUST use a correctly-implemented check_host() function (Section 4) evaluated with the correct parameters. Although the test as a whole is optional, once it has been decided to perform a test it has to be performed as specified so that the correct semantics are preserved between publisher and receiver.
To make the test, the mail receiver MUST evaluate the check_host() function with the arguments set as follows:
Although invalid, malformed, or non-existent domains cause SPF checks to return "none" because no SPF record can be found, it has long been the policy of many MTAs to reject email from such domains, especially in the case of invalid "MAIL FROM". Rejecting email will prevent one method of circumventing of SPF records.
Implementations have to take care to correctly extract the <domain> from the data given with the SMTP MAIL FROM command as many MTAs will still accept such things as source routes (see [RFC5321], Appendix C), the %-hack (see [RFC1123]), and bang paths (see [RFC1983]). These archaic features have been maliciously used to bypass security systems.
The authorization check SHOULD be performed during the processing of the SMTP transaction that sends the mail. This reduces the complexity of determining the correct IP address to use as an input to check_host() and allows errors to be returned directly to the sending MTA by way of SMTP replies.
Performing the authorization other than using the return-path and client address at the time of the MAIL command during the SMTP transaction can cause problems, such as the following: (1) It might be difficult to accurately extract the required information from potentially deceptive headers; (2) legitimate email might fail because the sender's policy had since changed.
Generating non-delivery notifications to forged identities that have failed the authorization check is a source of backscatter and SHOULD be avoided. Section 2 of [RFC3834] describes backscatter and the problems it causes.
Section 4 defines check_host(), a model function definition that uses the inputs defined above and the sender's policy published in the DNS to reach a conclusion about client authorization. An SPF verifier implements something semantically identical to the function defined there.
This section enumerates and briefly defines the possible outputs of that function. Information about how to handle these outputs is in Section 8.
A result of "none" means either (a) no syntactically valid DNS domain name was extracted from the SMTP session that could be used as the one to be authorized, or (b) no TXT records were retrieved from the DNS that appeared to be intended for use by SPF verifiers.
The domain owner has explicitly stated that it is not asserting whether the IP address is authorized. This result MUST be treated exactly like the "none" result; the distinction exists only for informational purposes.
A "pass" result means that the client is authorized to inject mail with the given identity. The domain can now, in the sense of reputation, be considered responsible for sending the message. Further policy checks can now proceed with confidence in the legitimate use of the identity. This is further discussed in Appendix G.1.
A "fail" result is an explicit statement that the client is not authorized to use the domain in the given identity.
The domain owner has published a weak statement that the host is probably not authorized. It has not published a stronger, more definitive policy that results in a "fail"
A "temperror" result means the SPF verifier encountered a transient (generally DNS) error while performing the check.
A "permerror" result means the domain's published records could not be correctly interpreted. This signals an error condition that definitely requires manual intervention to be resolved.
An SPF record is a DNS record that declares which hosts are, and are not, authorized to use a domain name for the "HELO" and "MAIL FROM" identities. Loosely, the record partitions all hosts into permitted and not-permitted sets (though some hosts might fall into neither category).
The SPF record is a single string of text. The record format is described below in Section 4. An example record is the following:
This record has a version of "spf1" and three directives: "+mx", "a:colo.example.com/28" (the + is implied), and "-all".
Each SPF record is placed in the DNS tree at the host name it pertains to, not a subdomain under it, such as is done with SRV records [RFC2782].
The example in this section might be published via these lines in a domain zone file:
example.com. TXT "v=spf1 +mx a:colo.example.com/28 -all"
smtp-out.example.com. TXT "v=spf1 a -all"
Since TXT records have multiple uses, beware of other TXT records published there for other purposes. They might cause problems with size limits (see Section 3.4) and care has to be taken to ensure only SPF records are used for SPF processing.
ADMDs publishing SPF records SHOULD try to keep the number of "include" mechanisms and chained "redirect" modifiers to a minimum. ADMDs SHOULD also try to minimize the amount of other DNS information needed to evaluate a record. Section 4.6.4 and Section 10.1.1 provide some suggestions on how to achieve this.
SPF records MUST be published as a DNS TXT (type 16) Resource Record (RR) [RFC1035] only. The character content of the record is encoded as [US-ASCII]. Use of alternate DNS RR types was supported in SPF's experimental phase, but has been discontinued. See Appendix A of [RFC6686] for further information.
A domain name MUST NOT have multiple records that would cause an authorization check to select more than one record. See Section 4.5 for the selection rules.
As defined in [RFC1035] sections 3.3.14 and 3.3, a single text DNS record can be composed of more than one string. If a published record contains multiple character-strings, then the record MUST be treated as if those strings are concatenated together without adding spaces. For example:
MUST be treated as equivalent to:
TXT records containing multiple strings are useful in constructing records that would exceed the 255-byte maximum length of a character-string within a single TXT record.
The published SPF record for a given domain name SHOULD remain small enough that the results of a query for it will fit within 512 octets. This UDP limit is defined in [RFC1035] section 2.3.4. This will keep even older DNS implementations from falling over to TCP. Since the answer size is dependent on many things outside the scope of this document, it is only possible to give this guideline: If the combined length of the DNS name and the text of all the records of a given type is under 450 octets, then DNS answers ought to fit in UDP packets. Records that are too long to fit in a single UDP packet could be silently ignored by SPF verifiers due to firewall and other issues that cause DNS over TCP to be less reliable than DNS over UDP.
Note that when computing the sizes for replies to queries of the TXT format, one has to take into account any other TXT records published at the domain name. Similarly, the sizes for replies to all queries related to SPF have to be evaluated to fit in a single UDP packet.
Use of wildcard records for publishing is discouraged and care has to be taken if they are used. If a zone includes wildcard MX records, it might want to publish wildcard declarations, subject to the same requirements and problems. In particular, the declaration MUST be repeated for any host that has any RR records at all, and for subdomains thereof. Consider the example in [RFC1034], Section 4.3.3. Based on that, we can do the following:
EXAMPLE.COM. MX 10 A.EXAMPLE.COM
EXAMPLE.COM. TXT "v=spf1 a:A.EXAMPLE.COM -all"
*.EXAMPLE.COM. MX 10 A.EXAMPLE.COM
*.EXAMPLE.COM. TXT "v=spf1 a:A.EXAMPLE.COM -all"
A.EXAMPLE.COM. A 203.0.113.1
A.EXAMPLE.COM. MX 10 A.EXAMPLE.COM
A.EXAMPLE.COM. TXT "v=spf1 a:A.EXAMPLE.COM -all"
*.A.EXAMPLE.COM. MX 10 A.EXAMPLE.COM
*.A.EXAMPLE.COM. TXT "v=spf1 a:A.EXAMPLE.COM -all"
SPF records have to be listed twice for every name within the zone: once for the name, and once with a wildcard to cover the tree under the name, in order to cover all domains in use in outgoing mail.
This description is not an API (Application Program Interface) definition, but rather a function description used to illustrate the algorithm. A compliant SPF implementation MUST do something semantically equivalent to this description.
The check_host() function fetches SPF records, parses them, and evaluates them to determine whether a particular host is or is not permitted to send mail with a given identity. Mail receivers that perform this check MUST correctly evaluate the check_host() function as described here.
Implementations MAY use a different algorithm than the canonical algorithm defined here, so long as the results are the same in all cases.
The check_host() function takes these arguments:
For recursive evaluations, the domain portion of <sender> might not be the same as the <domain> argument when check_host() is initially evaluated. In most other cases it will be the same. (See Section 5.2 below).
Note that the <domain> argument might not be a well-formed domain name. For example, if the reverse-path was null, then the EHLO/HELO domain is used, with its associated problems (see Section 2.1). In these cases, check_host() is defined in Section 4.3 to return a "none" result.
The function check_host() can return one of several results described in Section 2.6. Based on the result, the action to be taken is determined by the local policies of the receiver. This is discussed in Section 8.
If the <domain> is malformed (e.g. label longer than 63 characters, zero-length label not at the end, etc.) or is not a fully qualified domain name, or if the DNS lookup returns "domain does not exist" (RCODE 3), check_host() immediately returns the result "none". Properly formed domains are fully qualified email domains as described in [RFC5321] Section 2.3.5. Internationalized domain names MUST be encoded as A-labels, as described in Section 2.3 of [RFC5890].on 2.3 of [RFC5890].
If the <sender> has no local-part, substitute the string "postmaster" for the local-part.
In accordance with how the records are published (see Section 3 above), a DNS query needs to be made for the <domain> name, querying for type TXT only.
If all DNS lookups that are made return a server failure (RCODE 2), or other error (RCODE other than 0 or 3), or time out, then check_host() terminates immediately with the result "temperror". Alternatively, for a server failure (RCODE 2) result, check_host() MAY track failures and treat multiple failures within 24 hours for the same domain as "permerror".
This alternative is intended to shorten the queue time of messages that cannot be accepted, by returning a permanent negative completion reply code to the client, instead of a transient one. [RFC2308] suggests on an algorithm for doing such tracking and handling of server failure codes.
Records begin with a version section:
record = version terms *SP version = "v=spf1"
Starting with the set of records that were returned by the lookup, discard records that do not begin with a version section of exactly "v=spf1". Note that the version section is terminated either by an SP character or the end of the record. A record with a version section of "v=spf10" does not match and is discarded.
If the resultant record set includes no records, check_host() produces the "none" result. If the resultant record set includes more than one record, check_host() produces the "permerror" result.
The check_host() function parses and interprets the SPF record to find a result for the current test. If there are any syntax errors anywhere in the record, check_host() returns immediately with the result "permerror", without further interpretation.
There are two types of terms: mechanisms and modifiers. A record contains an ordered list of these as specified in the following Augmented Backus-Naur Form (ABNF).
terms = *( 1*SP ( directive / modifier ) )
directive = [ qualifier ] mechanism
qualifier = "+" / "-" / "?" / "~"
mechanism = ( all / include
/ A / MX / PTR / IP4 / IP6 / exists )
modifier = redirect / explanation / unknown-modifier
unknown-modifier = name "=" macro-string
; where name is not any known modifier
name = ALPHA *( ALPHA / DIGIT / "-" / "_" / "." )
Most mechanisms allow a ":" or "/" character after the name.
Modifiers always contain an equals ('=') character immediately after the name, and before any ":" or "/" characters that might be part of the macro-string.
Terms that do not contain any of "=", ":", or "/" are mechanisms, as defined in Section 5.
As per the definition of the ABNF notation in [RFC5234], mechanism and modifier names are case-insensitive.
Each mechanism is considered in turn from left to right. If there are no more mechanisms, the result is specified in Section 4.7.
When a mechanism is evaluated, one of three things can happen: it can match, not match, or return an exception.
If it matches, processing ends and the qualifier value is returned as the result of that record. If it does not match, processing continues with the next mechanism. If it returns an exception, mechanism processing ends and the exception value is returned.
The possible qualifiers, and the results they cause check_host() to return are as follows:
"+" pass
"-" fail
"~" softfail
"?" neutral
The qualifier is optional and defaults to "+".
When a mechanism matches and the qualifier is "-", then a "fail" result is returned and the explanation string is computed as described in Section 6.2.
The specific mechanisms are described in Section 5.
Modifiers are not mechanisms. They do not return match or not-match. Instead, they provide additional information. Although modifiers do not directly affect the evaluation of the record, the "redirect" modifier has an effect after all the mechanisms have been evaluated.
SPF implementations MUST limit the total number of mechanisms and modifiers ("terms") that cause any DNS query to at most 10 during SPF evaluation. Specifically, the "include", "a", "mx", "ptr", and "exists" mechanisms as well as the "redirect" modifier count against this collective limit. The "all", "ip4", and "ip6" mechanisms do not count against this limit. If this number is exceeded during a check, a permerror MUST be returned. The "exp" modifier does not count against this limit because the DNS lookup to fetch the explanation string occurs after the SPF record evaluation has been completed.
When evaluating the "mx" mechanism, the number of "MX" resource records queried is included in the overall limit of 10 mechanisms/ modifiers that cause DNS look ups described above. The evaluation of each "MX" record MUST NOT result in querying more than 10 "A" resource records. If this limit is exceeded, the "mx" mechanism MUST produce a "permerror" result.
When evaluating the "ptr" mechanism or the %{p} macro, the number of "PTR" resource records queried is included in the overall limit of 10 mechanisms/modifiers that cause DNS look ups described above. The evaluation of each "PTR" record MUST NOT result in querying more than 10 "A" resource records. If this limit is exceeded, all records other than the first 10 MUST be ignored.
The reason for the disparity is that the set of and contents of the MX record are under control of the domain owner, while the set of and contents of PTR records are under control of the owner of the IP address actually making the connection.
These limits are per mechanism or macro in the record, and are in addition to the lookup limits specified above.
MTAs or other processors SHOULD impose a limit on the maximum amount of elapsed time to evaluate check_host(). Such a limit SHOULD allow at least 20 seconds. If such a limit is exceeded, the result of authorization SHOULD be "temperror".
As described at the end of Section 11.1, there may be cases where it is useful to limit the number of "terms" for which DNS queries return either a positive answer (RCODE 0) with an answer count of 0, or a no such record (RCODE 3) answer. These are sometimes collectively referred to as "void lookups". SPF implementations SHOULD limit "void lookups" to two. An implementation MAY choose to make such a limit configurable. In this case, a default of two is RECOMMENDED.
If none of the mechanisms match and there is no "redirect" modifier, then the check_host() returns a result of "neutral", just as if "?all" were specified as the last directive. If there is a "redirect" modifier, check_host() proceeds as defined in Section 6.1.
Note that records SHOULD always use either a "redirect" modifier or an "all" mechanism to explicitly terminate processing. Although the latter has default (specifically "?all"), it aids debugging efforts if it is explicitly included.
For example:
or
Several of these mechanisms and modifiers have a domain-spec section. The domain-spec string is subject to macro expansion (see Section 7). The resulting string is the common presentation form of a fully-qualified DNS name: a series of labels separated by periods. This domain is called the <target-name> in the rest of this document.
Note: The result of the macro expansion is not subject to any further escaping. Hence, this facility cannot produce all characters that are legal in a DNS label (e.g., the control characters). However, this facility is powerful enough to express legal host names and common utility labels (such as "_spf") that are used in DNS.
For several mechanisms, the domain-spec is optional. If it is not provided, the <domain> from the check_host() arguments (see Section 4.1) is used as the <target-name>. Domain and domain-spec are syntactically identical after macro expansion. Domain is an input value for check_host() while domain-spec is computed by check_host().
Note: Historically, this document has made no provisions for how to handle domain-specs, or macro-expansions thereof, that are syntactically invalid per [RFC1035], such as names with empty labels (e.g., "foo..example.com") or overlong labels (more than 63 characters). Some implementations choose to treat as a no-match mechanisms, and ignore modifiers with such names, whereas others return a "permerror" exception. The outcome for an unexpected domain-spec without macros might even differ from that for an unexpected <target-name> after macro expansion.
This section defines two types of mechanisms.
Basic mechanisms contribute to the language framework. They do not specify a particular type of authorization scheme.
all
include
Designated sender mechanisms are used to designate a set of <ip> addresses as being permitted or not permitted to use the <domain> for sending mail.
a
mx
ptr (do not use)
ip4
ip6
exists
The following conventions apply to all mechanisms that perform a comparison between <ip> and an IP address at any point:
If no CIDR prefix length is given in the directive, then <ip> and the IP address are compared for equality. (Here, CIDR is Classless Inter-Domain Routing, described in [RFC4632].)
If a CIDR prefix length is specified, then only the specified number of high-order bits of <ip> and the IP address are compared for equality.
When any mechanism fetches host addresses to compare with <ip>, when <ip> is an IPv4, "A" records are fetched; when <ip> is an IPv6 address, "AAAA" records are fetched. SPF implementations on IPv6 servers need to handle both "AAAA" and "A" secords, for clients on IPv4 mapped IPv6 addresses [RFC4291]. IPv4 <ip> addresses are only listed in an SPF record using the "ip4" mechanism.
Several mechanisms rely on information fetched from the DNS. For these DNS queries, except where noted, if the DNS server returns an error (RCODE other than 0 or 3) or the query times out, the mechanism stops and the topmost check_host() returns "temperror". If the server returns "domain does not exist" (RCODE 3), then evaluation of the mechanism continues as if the server returned no error (RCODE 0) and zero answer records.
all = "all"
The "all" mechanism is a test that always matches. It is used as the rightmost mechanism in a record to provide an explicit default.
For example:
Mechanisms after "all" will never be tested. Mechanisms listed after "all" MUST be ignored. Any "redirect" modifier (Section 6.1) MUST be ignored when there is an "all" mechanism in the record.
include = "include" ":" domain-spec
The "include" mechanism triggers a recursive evaluation of check_host().
In hindsight, the name "include" was poorly chosen. Only the evaluated result of the referenced SPF record is used, rather than acting as if the referenced SPF record was literally included in the first. For example, evaluating a "-all" directive in the referenced record does not terminate the overall processing and does not necessarily result in an overall "fail". (Better names for this mechanism would have been "if-match", "on-match", etc.)
The "include" mechanism makes it possible for one domain to designate multiple administratively-independent domains. For example, a vanity domain "example.net" might send mail using the servers of administratively-independent domains example.com and example.org.
Example.net could say
This would direct check_host() to, in effect, check the records of example.com and example.org for a "pass" result. Only if the host were not permitted for either of those domains would the result be "fail".
Whether this mechanism matches, does not match, or returns an exception depends on the result of the recursive evaluation of check_host():
| A recursive check_host() result of: | Causes the "include" mechanism to: |
|---|---|
| pass | match |
| fail | not match |
| softfail | not match |
| neutral | not match |
| temperror | return temperror |
| permerror | return permerror |
| none | return permerror |
The "include" mechanism is intended for crossing administrative boundaries. For example, if example.com and example.org were managed by the same entity, and if the permitted set of hosts for both domains was
"mx:example.com", it would be possible for example.org to specify "include:example.com", but it would be preferable to specify "redirect=example.com" or even "mx:example.com".
With the "include" mechanism an administratively external set of hosts can be authorized, but determination of sender policy is still a function of the original domain's SPF record (as determined by the "all" mechanism in that record). The redirect modifier is more suitable for consolidating both authorizations and policy into a common set to be shared within an ADMD. Redirect is much more like a common code element to be shared among records in a single ADMD. It is possible to control both authorized hosts and policy for an arbitrary number of domains from a single record.
This mechanism matches if <ip> is one of the <target-name>'s IP addresses.
a = "a" [ ":" domain-spec ] [ dual-cidr-length ]
An address lookup is done on the <target-name>. The <ip> is compared to the returned address(es). If any address matches, the mechanism matches.
This mechanism matches if <ip> is one of the MX hosts for a domain name.
mx = "mx" [ ":" domain-spec ] [ dual-cidr-length ]
check_host() first performs an MX lookup on the <target-name>. Then it performs an address lookup on each MX name returned. The <ip> is compared to each returned IP address. To prevent Denial of Service (DoS) attacks, more than 10 MX names MUST NOT be looked up during the evaluation of an "mx" mechanism. If there are more than 10 MX names then permerror is returned and the evaluation terminated (see Section 4.6.4). If any address matches, the mechanism matches.
Note regarding implicit MXs: If the <target-name> has no MX records, check_host() MUST NOT pretend the target is its single MX, and MUST NOT default to an A or AAAA lookup on the <target-name> directly. This behavior diverges from the legacy "implicit MX" rule, (See [RFC5321], Section 5. If such behavior is desired, the publisher will have to specify an "a" directive).
This mechanism tests whether the DNS reverse-mapping for <ip> exists and correctly points to a domain name within a particular domain. This mechanism SHOULD NOT be used. See below for discussion.
ptr = "ptr" [ ":" domain-spec ]
The <ip>'s name is looked up using this procedure:
Check all validated domain names to see if they either match the <target-name> domain or are a subdomain of the <target-name> domain. If any do, this mechanism matches. If no validated domain name can be found, or if none of the validated domain names match or are a subdomain of the <target-name>, this mechanism fails to match. If a DNS error occurs while doing the PTR RR lookup, then this mechanism fails to match. If a DNS error occurs while doing an A RR lookup, then that domain name is skipped and the search continues.
Pseudocode:
sending-domain_names := ptr_lookup(sending-host_IP);
if more than 10 sending-domain_names are found, use at most 10.
for each name in (sending-domain_names) {
IP_addresses := a_lookup(name);
if the sending-domain_IP is one of the IP_addresses {
validated-sending-domain_names += name;
}
}
for each name in (validated-sending-domain_names) {
if name ends in <target-name>, return match.
if name is <target-name>, return match.
}
return no-match.
This mechanism matches if the <target-name> is either a subdomain of a validated domain name or if the <target-name> and a validated domain name are the same. For example: "mail.example.com" is within the domain "example.com", but "mail.bad-example.com" is not.
Note: This mechanism is slow, it is not as reliable as other mechanisms in cases of DNS errors, and it places a large burden on the .arpa name servers. If used, proper PTR records MUST be in place for the domain's hosts and the "ptr" mechanism SHOULD be one of the last mechanisms checked. After many years of SPF deployment experience it has been concluded it is unnecessary and more reliable alternatives used instead. It is, however, still in use and part of the SPF protocol, so compliant check_host() implementations MUST support it.
These mechanisms test whether <ip> is contained within a given IP network.
ip4 = "ip4" ":" ip4-network [ ip4-cidr-length ]
ip6 = "ip6" ":" ip6-network [ ip6-cidr-length ]
ip4-cidr-length = "/" 1*DIGIT
ip6-cidr-length = "/" 1*DIGIT
dual-cidr-length = [ ip4-cidr-length ] [ "/" ip6-cidr-length ]
ip4-network = qnum "." qnum "." qnum "." qnum
qnum = DIGIT ; 0-9
/ %x31-39 DIGIT ; 10-99
/ "1" 2DIGIT ; 100-199
/ "2" %x30-34 DIGIT ; 200-249
/ "25" %x30-35 ; 250-255
; as per conventional dotted quad notation. e.g., 192.0.2.0
ip6-network = <as per [RFC 4291], section 2.2>
; e.g., 2001:DB8::CD30
The <ip> is compared to the given network. If CIDR prefix length high-order bits match, the mechanism matches.
If ip4-cidr-length is omitted, it is taken to be "/32". If
ip6-cidr-length is omitted, it is taken to be "/128". It is not permitted to omit parts of the IP address instead of using CIDR notations. That is, use 192.0.2.0/24 instead of 192.0.2.
This mechanism is used to construct an arbitrary domain name that is used for a DNS A record query. It allows for complicated schemes involving arbitrary parts of the mail envelope to determine what is permitted.
exists = "exists" ":" domain-spec
The domain-spec is expanded as per Section 7. The resulting domain name is used for a DNS A RR lookup (even when the connection type is IPv6). If any A record is returned, this mechanism matches.
Domains can use this mechanism to specify arbitrarily complex queries. For example, suppose example.com publishes the record:
The <target-name> might expand to "1.2.0.192.someuser._spf.example.com". This makes fine-grained decisions possible at the level of the user and client IP address.
Modifiers are name/value pairs that provide additional information. Modifiers always have an "=" separating the name and the value.
The modifiers defined in this document ("redirect" and "exp") MAY appear anywhere in the record, but SHOULD appear at the end, after all mechanisms. Ordering of these two modifiers does not matter. These two modifiers MUST NOT appear in a record more than once each. If they do, then check_host() exits with a result of "permerror".
Unrecognized modifiers MUST be ignored no matter where in a record, or how often. This allows implementations of this document to gracefully handle records with modifiers that are defined in other specifications.
The redirect modifier is intended for consolidating both authorizations and policy into a common set to be shared within a single ADMD. Redirect is like a common code element to be shared among records in a single ADMD. It is possible to control both authorized hosts and policy for an arbitrary number of domains from a single record.
redirect = "redirect" "=" domain-spec
If all mechanisms fail to match, and a "redirect" modifier is present, then processing proceeds as follows:
The domain-spec portion of the redirect section is expanded as per the macro rules in Section 7. Then check_host() is evaluated with the resulting string as the <domain>. The <ip> and <sender> arguments remain the same as in the current evaluation of check_host().
The result of this new evaluation of check_host() is then considered the result of the current evaluation with the exception that if no SPF record is found, or if the <target-name> is malformed, the result is a "permerror" rather than "none".
Note that the newly-queried domain can itself specify redirect processing.
This facility is intended for use by organizations that wish to apply the same record to multiple domains. For example:
la.example.com. TXT "v=spf1 redirect=_spf.example.com"
ny.example.com. TXT "v=spf1 redirect=_spf.example.com"
sf.example.com. TXT "v=spf1 redirect=_spf.example.com"
_spf.example.com. TXT "v=spf1 mx:example.com -all"
In this example, mail from any of the three domains is described by the same record. This can be an administrative advantage.
Note: In general, the domain "A" cannot reliably use a redirect to another domain "B" not under the same administrative control. Since the <sender> stays the same, there is no guarantee that the record at domain "B" will correctly work for mailboxes in domain "A", especially if domain "B" uses mechanisms involving local-parts. An "include" directive is generally be more appropriate.
For clarity, it is RECOMMENDED that any "redirect" modifier appear as the very last term in a record.
explanation = "exp" "=" domain-spec
If check_host() results in a "fail" due to a mechanism match (such as "-all"), and the "exp" modifier is present, then the explanation string returned is computed as described below. If no "exp" modifier is present, then either a default explanation string or an empty explanation string MUST be returned.
The domain-spec is macro expanded (see Section 7) and becomes the <target-name>. The DNS TXT record for the <target-name> is fetched.
If there are any DNS processing errors (any RCODE other than 0), or if no records are returned, or if more than one record is returned, or if there are syntax errors in the explanation string, then proceed as if no exp modifier was given.
The fetched TXT record's strings are concatenated with no spaces, and then treated as an explain-string, which is macro-expanded. This final result is the explanation string. Implementations MAY limit the length of the resulting explanation string to allow for other protocol constraints and/or reasonable processing limits. Since the explanation string is intended for an SMTP response and [RFC5321] Section 2.4 says that responses are in [US-ASCII], the explanation string MUST be limited to US-ASCII.
Software evaluating check_host() can use this string to communicate information from the publishing domain in the form of a short message or URL. Software SHOULD make it clear that the explanation string comes from a third party. For example, it can prepend the macro string "%{o} explains: " to the explanation, such as shown in Section 2.6.4.
Suppose example.com has this record:
Here are some examples of possible explanation TXT records at explain._spf.example.com:
Note: During recursion into an "include" mechanism, an exp= modifier from the <target-name> MUST NOT be used. In contrast, when executing a "redirect" modifier, an exp= modifier from the original domain MUST NOT be used.
When evaluating an SPF policy record, certain character sequences are intended to be replaced by parameters of the message or of the connection. These character sequences are referred to as "macros".
domain-spec = macro-string domain-end
domain-end = ( "." toplabel [ "." ] ) / macro-expand
toplabel = ( *alphanum ALPHA *alphanum ) /
( 1*alphanum "-" *( alphanum / "-" ) alphanum )
alphanum = ALPHA / DIGIT
explain-string = *( macro-string / SP )
macro-string = *( macro-expand / macro-literal )
macro-expand = ( "%{" macro-letter transformers *delimiter "}" )
/ "%%" / "%_" / "%-"
macro-literal = %x21-24 / %x26-7E
; visible characters except "%"
macro-letter = "s" / "l" / "o" / "d" / "i" / "p" / "h" /
"c" / "r" / "t" / "v"
transformers = *DIGIT [ "r" ]
delimiter = "." / "-" / "+" / "," / "/" / "_" / "="
The ABNF description for a macro is as follows:
The "toplabel" construction is subject to the LDH rule plus additional top-level domain (TLD) restrictions. See Section 2 of [RFC3696] for background.
Some special cases:
The following macro letters are expanded in term arguments:
<domain>, <sender>, and <ip> are defined in Section 2.4.
The following macro letters are allowed only in "exp" text:
-exists:%(ir).sbl.spamhaus.example.org
-exists:%{ir}.sbl.spamhaus.example.org
A '%' character not followed by a '{', '%', '-', or '_' character is a syntax error. So:
Optional transformers are the following:
If transformers or delimiters are provided, the replacement value for a macro letter is split into parts separated by one or more of the specified delimiter characters. After performing any reversal operation and/or removal of left-hand parts, the parts are rejoined using "." and not the original splitting characters.
By default, strings are split on "." (dots). Note that no special treatment is given to leading, trailing, or consecutive delimiters in input strings, and so the list of parts might contain empty strings. Some older implementations of SPF prohibit trailing dots in domain names, so trailing dots SHOULD NOT be published by domain owners, although they MUST be accepted by implementations conforming to this document. Macros can specify delimiter characters that are used instead of ".".
The "r" transformer indicates a reversal operation: if the client IP address were 192.0.2.1, the macro %{i} would expand to "192.0.2.1" and the macro %{ir} would expand to "1.2.0.192".
The DIGIT transformer indicates the number of right-hand parts to use, after optional reversal. If a DIGIT is specified, the value MUST be nonzero. If no DIGITs are specified, or if the value specifies more parts than are available, all the available parts are used. If the DIGIT was 5, and only 3 parts were available, the macro interpreter would pretend the DIGIT was 3. Implementations MUST support at least a value of 128, as that is the maximum number of labels in a domain name.
The "s" macro expands to the <sender> argument. It is an email address with a local-part, an "@" character, and a domain. The "l" macro expands to just the local-part. The "o" macro expands to just the domain part. Note that these values remain the same during recursive and chained evaluations due to "include" and/or "redirect". Note also that if the original <sender> had no local-part, the local-part was set to "postmaster" in initial processing (see Section 4.3).
For IPv4 addresses, both the "i" and "c" macros expand to the standard dotted-quad format.
For IPv6 addresses, the "i" macro expands to a dot-format address; it is intended for use in %{ir}. The "c" macro can expand to any of the hexadecimal colon-format addresses specified in [RFC4291], Section 2.2. It is intended for humans to read.
The "p" macro expands to the validated domain name of <ip>. The procedure for finding the validated domain name is defined in Section 5.5. If the <domain> is present in the list of validated domains, it SHOULD be used. Otherwise, if a subdomain of the <domain> is present, it SHOULD be used. Otherwise, any name from the list can be used. If there are no validated domain names or if a DNS error occurs, the string "unknown" is used. This macro SHOULD NOT be used. See Section 5.5 for the discussion about why not.
The "h" macro expands to the parameter that was provided to the SMTP server via the HELO or EHLO SMTP verb. For sessions where that verb was provide more than once, the most recent instance is used.
The "r" macro expands to the name of the receiving MTA. This SHOULD be a fully qualified domain name, but if one does not exist (as when the checking is done by a MUA) or if policy restrictions dictate otherwise, the word "unknown" SHOULD be substituted. The domain name can be different from the name found in the MX record that the client MTA used to locate the receiving MTA.
The "t" macro expands to the decimal representation of the approximate number of seconds since the Epoch (Midnight, January 1, 1970, UTC) at the time of the evaluation. This is the same value as is returned by the POSIX time() function in most standards-compliant libraries.
When the result of macro expansion is used in a domain name query, if the expanded domain name exceeds 253 characters (the maximum length of a domain name), the left side is truncated to fit, by removing successive domain labels (and their following dots) until the total length does not exceed 253 characters.
Uppercased macros expand exactly as their lowercased equivalents, and are then URL escaped. URL escaping MUST be performed for characters not in the "unreserved" set, which is defined in [RFC3986].
Note: Care has to be taken by the sending ADMD so that macro expansion for legitimate email does not exceed the 63-character limit on DNS labels. The local-part of email addresses, in particular, can have more than 63 characters between dots.
Note: To minimize DNS lookup resource requirements, it is better if sending ADMDs avoid using the "s", "l", "o", or "h" macros in conjunction with any mechanism directive. Although these macros are powerful and allow per-user records to be published, they severely limit the ability of implementations to cache results of check_host() and they reduce the effectiveness of DNS caches.
Note: If no directive processed during the evaluation of check_host() contains an "s", "l", "o", or "h" macro, then the results of the evaluation can be cached on the basis of <domain> and <ip> alone for as long as the shortest Time To Live (TTL) of all the DNS records involved.
macro expansion
------- ----------------------------
%{s} strong-bad@email.example.com
%{o} email.example.com
%{d} email.example.com
%{d4} email.example.com
%{d3} email.example.com
%{d2} example.com
%{d1} com
%{dr} com.example.email
%{d2r} example.email
%{l} strong-bad
%{l-} strong.bad
%{lr} strong-bad
%{lr-} bad.strong
%{l1r-} strong
macro-string expansion
--------------------------------------------------------------------
%{ir}.%{v}._spf.%{d2} 3.2.0.192.in-addr._spf.example.com
%{lr-}.lp._spf.%{d2} bad.strong.lp._spf.example.com
%{lr-}.lp.%{ir}.%{v}._spf.%{d2}
bad.strong.lp.3.2.0.192.in-addr._spf.example.com
%{ir}.%{v}.%{l1r-}.lp._spf.%{d2}
3.2.0.192.in-addr.strong.lp._spf.example.com
%{d2}.trusted-domains.example.net
example.com.trusted-domains.example.net
IPv6:
%{ir}.%{v}._spf.%{d2} 1.0.B.C.0.0.0.0.
0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.8.B.D.0.1.0.0.2.ip6._spf.example.com
This section provides guidance for operators in response to the various possible outputs of check_host() on a message. Terse definitions of SPF results are presented in Section 2.6; this section provides more detail on each for use in developing local policy for message handling.
Every operating environment is different. There are some receivers for whom strict adherence to SPF is appropriate, and definitive treatment of messages that are evaluated to be explicity unauthorized ("fail" and sometimes "softfail") is the norm. There are others for which the "false negative" cases are more of a concern. This concern is typically handled by merely recording the result in the header and allowing the message to pass on for additional processing. There are still others where SPF is one of several inputs to the message handling decision. As such, there is no normative requirement for message handling in response to any particular result. This section is provided to present a complete picture of the likely cause of each result, and where available, the experience gained during experimental deployment.
There are essentially two classes of handling choices:
With a "none" result, the SPF verifier has no information at all about the authorization or lack thereof of the client to use the checked idenity or identities. The check_host() function completed without errors but was not able to reach any conclusion.
A "neutral" result indicates that although a policy for the identity was discovered, there is no definite assertion about the (positive or negative) about the client.
A "neutral" result MUST be treated exactly like the "none" result; the distinction exists only for informational purposes. Treating "neutral" more harshly than "none" would discourage domain owners from testing the use of SPF records (see Section 10.1).
A "pass" result means that the client is authorized to inject mail with the given identity. The domain can now, in the sense of reputation, be considered responsible for sending the message. Further policy checks can now proceed with confidence in the legitimate use of the identity. This is further discussed in Appendix G.1.
A "fail" result is an explicit statement that the client is not authorized to use the domain in the given identity. Disposition of SPF fail messages is a matter of local policy. See Appendix G.2 for considerations on developing local policy.
If the checking software chooses to reject the mail during the SMTP transaction, then it SHOULD use an SMTP reply code of 550 (see [RFC5321]) and, if supported, the 5.7.1 enhanced status code (see [RFC3463]), in addition to an appropriate reply text. The check_host() function will return either a default explanation string or one from the domain that published the SPF records (see Section 6.2). If the information does not originate with the checking software, it is good to make it clear that the text is provided by the sender's domain. For example:
550-5.7.1 SPF MAIL FROM check failed:
550-5.7.1 The domain example.com explains:
550 5.7.1 Please see http://www.example.com/mailpolicy.html
If the checking software chooses not to reject the mail during the SMTP transaction, then it SHOULD add a Received-SPF or Authentication-Results header field (see Section 9) to communicate this result to downstream message processors. While this is true for all SPF results, it is of particular importance for "fail" results since the message is explicitly not authorized by the domain owner.
A "softfail" result ought to be treated as somewhere between "fail" and "neutral"/"none". The domain owner believes the host is not authorized but is not willing to make a strong policy statement. Receiving software SHOULD NOT reject the message based solely on this result, but MAY subject the message to closer scrutiny than normal.
The domain owner wants to discourage the use of this host and thus desires limited feedback when a "softfail" result occurs. For example, the recipient's Mail User Agent (MUA) could highlight the "softfail" status, or the receiving MTA could give the sender a message using greylisting, [RFC6647], with a note the first time the message is received, but accept it on a later attempt based on receiver policy.
A "temperror" result means the SPF verifier encountered a transient (generally DNS) error while performing the check. Checking software can choose to accept or temporarily reject the message. If the message is rejected during the SMTP transaction for this reason, the software SHOULD use an SMTP reply code of 451 and, if supported, the 4.4.3 enhanced status code. These errors can be caused by problems in either the sender's or receiver's DNS software.
A "permerror" result means the domain's published records could not be correctly interpreted. This signals an error condition that definitely requires manual intervention to be resolved. If the message is rejected during the SMTP transaction for this reason, the software SHOULD use an SMTP reply code of 550 and, if supported, the 5.5.2 enhanced status code. Be aware that if the domain owner uses macros (Section 7), it is possible that this result is due to the checked identities having an unexpected format. It is also possible that this result is generated by certain SPF clients due to the input arguments having an unexpected format; see Section 4.8.
To provide downstream agents, such as MUAs, with the information they might need in terms of evaluating or representing the apparent safety of the message content, it is RECOMMENDED that SMTP receivers record the result of SPF processing in the message header. For operators that choose to record SPF results in the header of the message for processing by internal filters or MUAs, two methods are presented. Section 9.1 defines the Received-SPF field, which is the results field originally defined for SPF use. Section 9.2 discusses Authentication-Results [RFC5451] which was specified more recently and is designed for use by SPF and other authentication methods.
Both are in common use, and hence both are included here. However, it is important to note that they were designed to serve slightly different purposes. Received-SPF is intended to include enough forensic information to enable reconstruction of the SPF evaluation of the message, while Authentication-Results is designed only to relay the result itself and related output details of likely use to end users (e.g., what property of the message was actually authenticated and what it contained), leaving forensic work to the purview of system logs and the Received field contents. Also, Received-SPF relies on compliance of agents within the receiving ADMD to adhere to the header field ordering rules of [RFC5321] and [RFC5322], while Authentication-Results includes some provisions to protect against non-compliant implementations.
An operator could choose to use both to serve different downstream agents. In such cases, care needs to be taken to ensure both fields are conveying the same details, or unexpected results can occur.
The Received-SPF header field is a trace field (see [RFC5322] Section 3.6.7) and SHOULD be prepended to the existing header, above the Received: field that is generated by the SMTP receiver. It MUST appear above all other Received-SPF fields in the message. The header field has the following format:
header-field = "Received-SPF:" [CFWS] result FWS [comment FWS]
[ key-value-list ] CRLF
result = "pass" / "fail" / "softfail" / "neutral" /
"none" / "temperror" / "permerror"
key-value-list = key-value-pair *( ";" [CFWS] key-value-pair )
[";"]
key-value-pair = key [CFWS] "=" ( dot-atom / quoted-string )
key = "client-ip" / "envelope-from" / "helo" /
"problem" / "receiver" / "identity" /
"mechanism" / name
identity = "mailfrom" ; for the "MAIL FROM" identity
/ "helo" ; for the "HELO" identity
/ name ; other identities
dot-atom = <unquoted word as per [RFC5322]>
quoted-string = <quoted string as per [RFC5322]>
comment = <comment string as per [RFC5322]>
CFWS = <comment or folding white space as per [RFC5322]>
FWS = <folding white space as per [RFC5322]>
CRLF = <standard end-of-line token as per [RFC2532]>
The header field SHOULD include a "(...)" style comment after the result, conveying supporting information for the result, such as <ip>, <sender>, and <domain>.
The following key-value pairs are designed for later machine parsing. SPF verifiers SHOULD give enough information so that the SPF results can be verified. That is, at least "client-ip", "helo", and, if the "MAIL FROM" identity was checked, "envelope-from".
Other keys MAY be defined by SPF verifiers.
SPF verifiers MUST make sure that the Received-SPF header field does not contain invalid characters, is not excessively long (See [RFC5322] Section 2.1.1), and does not contain malicious data that has been provided by the sender.
Examples of various header field styles that could be generated are the following:
Received-SPF: pass (mybox.example.org: domain of
myname@example.com designates 192.0.2.1 as permitted sender)
receiver=mybox.example.org; client-ip=192.0.2.1;
envelope-from="myname@example.com"; helo=foo.example.com;
Received-SPF: fail (mybox.example.org: domain of
myname@example.com does not designate
192.0.2.1 as permitted sender)
identity=mailfrom; client-ip=192.0.2.1;
envelope-from="myname@example.com";
Received-SPF: pass (mybox.example.org: domain of
myname@example.com designates 192.0.2.1 as permitted sender)
receiver=mybox.example.org; client-ip=192.0.2.1;
mechanism=ip4:192.0.2.1; envelope-from="myname@example.com";
helo=foo.example.com;
As mentioned in Section 9, the Authentication-Results header field is designed to communicate lists of tests a border MTA did and their results. The specified elements of the field provide less information than the Received-SPF field:
Authentication-Results: myhost.example.org; spf=pass
smtp.mailfrom=example.net
Received-SPF: pass (myhost.example.org: domain of
myname@example.com designates 192.0.2.1 as permitted sender)
receiver=mybox.example.org; client-ip=192.0.2.1;
envelope-from="myname@example.com"; helo=foo.example.com;
It is, however, possible to add CFWS in the "reason" part of an Authentication-Results header field and provide the equivalent information, if desired.
Authentication-Results: myhost.example.org; spf=pass
reason="client-ip=192.0.2.1; smtp.helo=foo.example.com"
smtp.mailfrom=user@example.net
As an example, an expanded Authentication-Results header field might look like (for a "MAIL FROM" check in this example):
This section outlines the major implications that adoption of this document will have on various entities involved in Internet email. It is intended to make clear to the reader where this document knowingly affects the operation of such entities. This section is not a "how-to" manual, or a "best practices" document, and it is not a comprehensive list of what such entities SHOULD do in light of this document.
This section provides operational advice and instruction only. It is non-normative.
[RFC5598] describes the Internet email architecture. This section is organized based on the different segments of the architecture.
Originating ADMDs (ADministrative Management Domains - [RFC5598] Section 2.2.1 and Section 2.3) that wish to be compliant with this specification will need to determine the list of relays ([RFC5598] Section 2.2.2) that they allow to use their domain name in the "HELO" and "MAIL FROM" identities when relaying to other ADMDs. It is recognized that forming such a list is not just a simple technical exercise, but involves policy decisions with both technical and administrative considerations.
Minimizing the DNS resources required for SPF lookups can be done by choosing directives that require less DNS information and by placing lower-cost mechanisms earlier in the SPF record.
+----------+--------+-----------------+
| term | cost | limit |
+----------+--------+-----------------+
| ip4/ip6 | 0 | - |
| a | 1 | 10 |
| include | 1 | 10 |
| redirect | 1 | 10 |
| exists | 1 | 10 |
| mx | 1 + N* | 10 and N* <= 10 |
| ptr/%{p} | 1 + N* | 10 and N* <= 10 |
| all | 0 | - |
+----------+--------+-----------------+
* N is the number of RRs found during each term evaluation
Section 4.6.4 specifies the limits receivers have to use. It is essential to publish records that do not exceed these requirements. It is also required to carefully weight the cost and the maintainability of licit solutions.
For example, consider a domain set up as follows:
example.com. IN MX 10 mx.example.com.
IN MX 20 mx2.example.com.
mx.example.com. IN A 192.0.2.1
mx2.example.com. IN A 192.0.2.129
Assume the administrative point is to authorize (pass) mx and mx2 while failing every other host. Compare the following solutions:
Best record:
example.com. IN TXT "v=spf1 ip4:192.0.2.1 ip4:192.0.2.129 -all"
Good record:
$ORIGIN example.com.
@ IN TXT "v=spf1 a:authorized-spf.example.com -all"
authorized-spf IN A 192.0.2.1
IN A 192.0.2.129
Expensive record:
example.com. IN TXT "v=spf1 mx:example.com -all"
Wasteful, bad record:
example.com. IN TXT "v=spf1 ip4:192.0.2.0/24 mx -all"
There might be administrative considerations: using "a" over "ip4" or "ip6" allows hosts to be renumbered easily. Using "mx" over "a" allows the set of mail hosts to be changed easily. Unless such changes are common, it is better to use the less resource intensive mechanisms like "ip4" and "ip6" over "a" or "a" or "mx".
www.example.com. IN TXT "v=spf1 -all"
relay.example.com. IN TXT "v=spf1 a -all"
In some specific cases, standard advice on record content is appropriate. Publishing SPF records for domains that send no mail is a well established best practice. The record for a domain that sends no mail is:
Validating correct deployment is difficult. [RFC6652] describes one mechanism for soliciting feedback on SPF failures. Another suggestion can be found in Appendix C.
Regardless of the method used, understanding the ADMD's outbound mail architecture is essential to effective deployment.
As explained in Section 1.1.3, [RFC5321] allows the reverse-path to be null, which is typical of some Delivery Status Notification [RFC3464], commonly called email bounces. In this case the only entity available for performing an SPF check is the "HELO" identity defined in Section 1.1.4. SPF functionality is enhanced by administrators ensuring this identity is set correctly and has an appropriate SPF record. It is normal to have the HELO identity set to hostname instead of domain. Zone file generation for significant numbers of hosts can be consolidated using the redirect modifier and scripted for initial deployment. Specific deployment advice is given above in Section 10.1.2.
SPF results can be used in combination with other methods to determine the final local disposition (either positive or negative of a message. It can also be considered dispositive on its own.
An attempt to have one organization (sender) direct the email handling policies of another (receiver) is inherently challenging and often controversial. As stated elsewhere in this document, there is no normative requirement for specific handling of a message based on any SPF result. The information presented in Section 8 and in Appendix G is offered for receiver consideration when forming local handling policies.
The primary considerations are that SPF might return "pass" for mail that is ultimately harmful (e.g., spammers that arrange for SPF to pass using nonsense domain names, or virus or spam outbreaks from within trusted sources), and might also return "fail" for mail that is ultimately legitimate (e.g., legitimate mail that has traversed a mail alias). It is important take both of these cases under consideration when establishing local handling policy.
Mediators are a type of User actor.[RFC5598]. That is, a mediator takes 'delivery' of a message and posts a 'submission' of a new message. The mediator can make the newly-posted message be as similar or as different from the original message as they wish. Examples include mailing lists (see [RFC5598] Section 5.3) and ReSenders ([RFC5598] Section 5.2). This is discussed in [RFC5321], Section 3.9. For the operation of SPF, the essential concern is the email address in the 5321.MailFrom command for the new message.
Because SPF evaluation is based on the IP Address of the "last" sending SMTP server, the address of the mediator will be used, rather than the address of the SMTP server that sent the message to the mediator. Some mediators retain the email address from the original message, while some use a new address.
If the address is the same as for the original message, and the original message had an associated SPF record, then the SPF evaluation will fail unless mitigations such as those described in Appendix D are used.
As with most aspects of email, there are a number of ways that malicious parties could use the protocol as an avenue for a
Denial-of-Service (DoS) attack. The processing limits outlined in Section 4.6.4 are designed to prevent attacks such as the following:
Of these, the case of a third party referenced in the SPF record is the easiest for a DoS attack to effectively exploit. As a result, limits that might seem reasonable for an individual mail server can still allow an unreasonable amount of bandwidth amplification. Therefore, the processing limits need to be quite low.
Do not construe the "MAIL FROM" and "HELO" identity authorizations to provide more assurance than they do. It is entirely possible for a malicious sender to inject a message using his own domain in the identities used by SPF, to have that domain's SPF record authorize the sending host, and yet the message can easily list other identities in its header. Unless the user or the MUA takes care to note that the authorized identity does not match the other more commonly-presented identities (such as the From: header field), the user might be lulled into a false sense of security.
There are two aspects of this protocol that malicious parties could exploit to undermine the validity of the check_host() function:
By definition, SPF policies just map domain names to sets of authorized MTAs, not whole email addresses to sets of authorized users. Although the "l" macro (Section 7) provides a limited way to define individual sets of authorized MTAs for specific email addresses, it is generally impossible to verify, through SPF, the use of specific email addresses by individual users of the same MTA.
It is up to mail services and their MTAs to directly prevent
cross-user forgery: based on SMTP AUTH ([RFC4954]), users have to be restricted to using only those email addresses that are actually under their control (see [RFC6409], Section 6.1). Another means to verify the identity of individual users is message cryptography such as PGP ([RFC4880]) or S/MIME ([RFC5751]).
An SPF compliant receiver gathers information from the SMTP commands it receives and from the published DNS records of the sending domain holder, (e.g., "HELO" domain name, the "MAIL FROM" address from the envelope, and SPF DNS records published by the domain holder).
This information, passed to the receiver in the Received-SPF: or Authentication-Results: trace fields, may be returned to the client MTA as an SMTP rejection message. If such an SMTP rejection message is generated, the information from the trace fields has to be checked for such problems as invalid characters and excessively long lines.
When the authorization check fails, an explanation string could be included in the reject response. Both the sender and the rejecting receiver need to be aware that the explanation was determined by the publisher of the SPF record checked and, in general, not the receiver. The explanation can contain malicious URLs, or it might be offensive or misleading.
Explanations returned to sender domains due to "exp" modifiers, (Section 6.2), were generated by the sender policy published by the domain holders themselves. As long as messages are only returned with non-delivery notification ([RFC3464]) to domains publishing the explanation strings from their own DNS SPF records, the only affected parties are the original publishers of the domain's SPF records.
In practice, such non-delivery notifications can be misdirected, such as when an MTA accepts an email and only later generates the notification to a forged address, or when an email forwarder does not direct the bounce back to the original sender.
Macros (Section 7) allow senders to inject arbitrary text (any non-null [US-ASCII] character) into receiver DNS queries. It is necesary to be prepared for hostile or unexpected content.
Checking SPF records causes DNS queries to be sent to the domain owner. These DNS queries, especially if they are caused by the "exists" mechanism, can contain information about who is sending email and likely to which MTA the email is being sent. This can introduce some privacy concerns, which are more or less of an issue depending on local laws and the relationship between the domain owner and the person sending the email.
Operators that choose to deliver mail for which SPF produces a "fail" result need to understand that they are admitting content that is explicitly not authorized by the purported sender. While there are known failure modes that can be considered "false negatives", the distinct choice to admit those messages increases end-user exposure to likely harm. This is especially true for domains belonging to known good actors that are typically well-behaved; unauthorized mail from those sources might well be subjected to much higher skepticism and content analysis.
SPF does not, however, include the capacity for identifying good actors from bad ones, nor does it handle the concept of known actors versus unknown ones. Those notions are out of scope for this specification.
This document is largely based on the work of Meng Weng Wong, Mark Lentczner, and Wayne Schlitt. Although, as this section acknowledges, many people have contributed to this document, a very large portion of the writing and editing are due to Meng, Mark, and Wayne.
This design owes a debt of parentage to [RMX] by Hadmut Danisch and to [DMP] by Gordon Fecyk. The idea of using a DNS record to check the legitimacy of an email address traces its ancestry further back through messages on the namedroppers mailing list by Paul Vixie [Vixie] (based on suggestion by Jim Miller) and by David Green [Green].
Philip Gladstone contributed the concept of macros to the specification, multiplying the expressiveness of the language and making per-user and per-IP lookups possible.
The authors of both this document and [RFC4408] would also like to thank the literally hundreds of individuals who have participated in the development of this design. They are far too numerous to name, but they include the following:
Per [RFC4408], the IANA assigned the Resource Record Type and Qtype from the DNS Parameters Registry for the SPF RR type with code 99. The format of this type is identical to the TXT RR [RFC1035]. The character content of the record is encoded as [US-ASCII]. Use of this record type is obsolete for SPF Version 1.
IANA is requested to add an annotation to the SPF RRTYPE saying "(OBSOLETE - use TXT)" in the DNS Parameters registry.
[NOTE TO RFC EDITOR: (to be changed to " ... has added ..." upon publication)]
Per [RFC3864], the "Received-SPF:" header field is added to the IANA Permanent Message Header Field Registry. The following is the registration template:
[RFC6652] created a new SPF Modifier Registration. IANA is requested to change the reference for the exp and redirect modifiers from [RFC4408] to this document. Their status should not be changed.
| [RFC1035] | Mockapetris, P., "Domain names - implementation and specification", STD 13, RFC 1035, DOI 10.17487/RFC1035, November 1987. |
| [RFC1123] | Braden, R., "Requirements for Internet Hosts - Application and Support", STD 3, RFC 1123, DOI 10.17487/RFC1123, October 1989. |
| [RFC2119] | Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997. |
| [RFC3463] | Vaudreuil, G., "Enhanced Mail System Status Codes", RFC 3463, DOI 10.17487/RFC3463, January 2003. |
| [RFC3864] | Klyne, G., Nottingham, M. and J. Mogul, "Registration Procedures for Message Header Fields", BCP 90, RFC 3864, DOI 10.17487/RFC3864, September 2004. |
| [RFC3986] | Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R. and L. Masinter, "Uniform Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax", STD 66, RFC 3986, DOI 10.17487/RFC3986, January 2005. |
| [RFC4291] | Hinden, R. and S. Deering, "IP Version 6 Addressing Architecture", RFC 4291, DOI 10.17487/RFC4291, February 2006. |
| [RFC5234] | Crocker, D. and P. Overell, "Augmented BNF for Syntax Specifications: ABNF", STD 68, RFC 5234, DOI 10.17487/RFC5234, January 2008. |
| [RFC5321] | Klensin, J., "Simple Mail Transfer Protocol", RFC 5321, DOI 10.17487/RFC5321, October 2008. |
| [RFC5322] | Resnick, P., "Internet Message Format", RFC 5322, DOI 10.17487/RFC5322, October 2008. |
| [RFC5451] | Kucherawy, M., "Message Header Field for Indicating Message Authentication Status", RFC 5451, DOI 10.17487/RFC5451, April 2009. |
| [RFC5598] | Crocker, D., "Internet Mail Architecture", RFC 5598, DOI 10.17487/RFC5598, July 2009. |
| [RFC5890] | Klensin, J., "Internationalized Domain Names for Applications (IDNA): Definitions and Document Framework", RFC 5890, DOI 10.17487/RFC5890, August 2010. |
| [US-ASCII] | American National Standards Institute (formerly United States of America Standards Institute), "USA Code for Information Interchange, X3.4", 1968. ANSI X3.4-1968 has been replaced by newer versions with slight modifications, but the 1968 version remains definitive for the Internet. |
This section is normative and any discrepancies with the ABNF fragments in the preceding text are to be resolved in favor of this grammar.
See [RFC5234] for ABNF notation. Please note that as per this ABNF definition, literal text strings (those in quotes) are case-insensitive. Hence, "mx" matches "mx", "MX", "mX", and "Mx".
record = version terms *SP
version = "v=spf1"
terms = *( 1*SP ( directive / modifier ) )
directive = [ qualifier ] mechanism
qualifier = "+" / "-" / "?" / "~"
mechanism = ( all / include
/ A / MX / PTR / IP4 / IP6 / exists )
all = "all"
include = "include" ":" domain-spec
A = "a" [ ":" domain-spec ] [ dual-cidr-length ]
MX = "mx" [ ":" domain-spec ] [ dual-cidr-length ]
PTR = "ptr" [ ":" domain-spec ]
IP4 = "ip4" ":" ip4-network [ ip4-cidr-length ]
IP6 = "ip6" ":" ip6-network [ ip6-cidr-length ]
exists = "exists" ":" domain-spec
modifier = redirect / explanation / unknown-modifier
redirect = "redirect" "=" domain-spec
explanation = "exp" "=" domain-spec
unknown-modifier = name "=" macro-string
; where name is not any known modifier
ip4-cidr-length = "/" 1*DIGIT
ip6-cidr-length = "/" 1*DIGIT
dual-cidr-length = [ ip4-cidr-length ] [ "/" ip6-cidr-length ]
ip4-network = qnum "." qnum "." qnum "." qnum
qnum = DIGIT ; 0-9
/ %x31-39 DIGIT ; 10-99
/ "1" 2DIGIT ; 100-199
/ "2" %x30-34 DIGIT ; 200-249
/ "25" %x30-35 ; 250-255
; conventional dotted quad notation. e.g., 192.0.2.0
ip6-network = <as per [RFC 4291], section 2.2>
; e.g., 2001:DB8::CD30
domain-spec = macro-string domain-end
domain-end = ( "." toplabel [ "." ] ) / macro-expand
toplabel = ( *alphanum ALPHA *alphanum ) /
( 1*alphanum "-" *( alphanum / "-" ) alphanum )
; LDH rule plus additional TLD restrictions
; (see [RFC3696], Section 2 for background)
alphanum = ALPHA / DIGIT
explain-string = *( macro-string / SP )
macro-string = *( macro-expand / macro-literal )
macro-expand = ( "%{" macro-letter transformers *delimiter "}" )
/ "%%" / "%_" / "%-"
macro-literal = %x21-24 / %x26-7E
; visible characters except "%"
macro-letter = "s" / "l" / "o" / "d" / "i" / "p" / "h" /
"c" / "r" / "t" / "v"
transformers = *DIGIT [ "r" ]
delimiter = "." / "-" / "+" / "," / "/" / "_" / "="
name = ALPHA *( ALPHA / DIGIT / "-" / "_" / "." )
header-field = "Received-SPF:" [CFWS] result FWS [comment FWS]
[ key-value-list ] CRLF
result = "pass" / "fail" / "softfail" / "neutral" /
"none" / "temperror" / "permerror"
key-value-list = key-value-pair *( ";" [CFWS] key-value-pair )
[";"]
key-value-pair = key [CFWS] "=" ( dot-atom / quoted-string )
key = "client-ip" / "envelope-from" / "helo" /
"problem" / "receiver" / "identity" /
"mechanism" / name
identity = "mailfrom" ; for the "MAIL FROM" identity
/ "helo" ; for the "HELO" identity
/ name ; other identities
ALPHA = <A-Z / a-z as per [RFC5234]>
DIGIT = <0-9 as per [RFC5234]>
SP = <space character as per [RFC5234]>
domain = <fully qualified domain as per [RFC5321]>
dot-atom = <unquoted word as per [RFC5322]>
quoted-string = <quoted string as per [RFC5322]>
comment = <comment string as per [RFC5322]>
CFWS = <comment or folding white space as per [RFC5322]>
FWS = <folding white space as per [RFC5322]>
CRLF = <standard end-of-line token as per [RFC5322]>
authserv-id = <authserv-id per [RFC5451]>
reasonspec = <reason per [RFC5451]>
These examples are based on the following DNS setup:
; A domain with two mail servers, two hosts
; and two servers at the domain name
$ORIGIN example.com.
@ MX 10 mail-a
MX 20 mail-b
A 192.0.2.10
A 192.0.2.11
amy A 192.0.2.65
bob A 192.0.2.66
mail-a A 192.0.2.129
mail-b A 192.0.2.130
www CNAME example.com.
; A related domain
$ORIGIN example.org.
@ MX 10 mail-c
mail-c A 192.0.2.140
; The reverse IP for those addresses
$ORIGIN 2.0.192.in-addr.arpa.
10 PTR example.com.
11 PTR example.com.
65 PTR amy.example.com.
66 PTR bob.example.com.
129 PTR mail-a.example.com.
130 PTR mail-b.example.com.
140 PTR mail-c.example.org.
; A rogue reverse IP domain that claims to be
; something it's not
$ORIGIN 0.0.10.in-addr.arpa.
4 PTR bob.example.com.
These examples show various possible published records for example.com and which values if <ip> would cause check_host() to return "pass". Note that <domain> is "example.com".
v=spf1 +all
v=spf1 a -all
v=spf1 a:example.org -all
v=spf1 mx -all
v=spf1 mx:example.org -all
v=spf1 mx mx:example.org -all
v=spf1 mx/30 mx:example.org/30 -all
v=spf1 ptr -all
v=spf1 ip4:192.0.2.128/28 -all
These examples show the effect of related records:
This record would be used if mail from example.org actually came through servers at example.com and example.net. Example.org's designated servers are the union of example.com's and example.net's designated servers.
These records allow a set of domains that all use the same mail system to make use of that mail system's record. In this way, only the mail system's record needs to be updated when the mail setup changes. These domains' records never have to change.
Imagine that, in addition to the domain records listed above, there are these:
$ORIGIN _spf.example.com.
mary.mobile-users A 127.0.0.2
fred.mobile-users A 127.0.0.2
15.15.168.192.joel.remote-users A 127.0.0.2
16.15.168.192.joel.remote-users A 127.0.0.2
The following records describe users at example.com who mail from arbitrary servers, or who mail from personal servers.
example.com:
v=spf1 mx
include:mobile-users._spf.%{d}
include:remote-users._spf.%{d}
-all
mobile-users._spf.example.com:
v=spf1 exists:%{l1r+}.%{d}
remote-users._spf.example.com:
v=spf1 exists:%{ir}.%{l1r+}.%{d}
Say that your sender policy requires both that the IP address is within a certain range and that the reverse DNS for the IP matches. This can be done several ways, including the following:
example.com. SPF ( "v=spf1 "
"-include:ip4._spf.%{d} "
"-include:ptr._spf.%{d} "
"+all" )
ip4._spf.example.com. SPF "v=spf1 -ip4:192.0.2.0/24 +all"
ptr._spf.example.com. SPF "v=spf1 -ptr +all"
This example shows how the "-include" mechanism can be useful, how an SPF record that ends in "+all" can be very restrictive, and the use of De Morgan's Law.
Another approach that can be helpful to publish records that include a "tracking exists:" mechanism. By looking at the name server logs, a rough list can then be generated. For example:
There are three places that techniques can be used to ameliorate unintended SPF failures with mediators.
The beginning, when email is first sent:
This would cause a lookup on an DNS white list (DNSWL) and cause a result of "fail" only for email not either coming from the domain's mx host(s) (SPF pass) or white listed sources (SPF neutral). This, in effect, outsources an element of sender policy to the maintainer of the whitelist.
Then, a specialized DNS server can be set up to serve the _spf_verify subdomain that validates the local-part. Although this requires an extra DNS lookup, this happens only when the email would otherwise be rejected as not coming from a known good source.
The middle, when email is forwarded:.
The end, when email is received:
MSPs (Mail Service Providers - [RFC5598] Section 2.3) that offer mail services to third-party domains, such as sending of bulk mail, might want to adjust their configurations in light of the authorization check described in this document. If the domain part of the "MAIL FROM" identity used for such email uses the domain of one of the MSPs domain, then the provider needs only to ensure that its sending host is authorized by its own SPF record, if any.
If the "MAIL FROM" identity does not use the MSP's domain, then extra care has to be taken. The SPF record format has several options for the third-party domain to authorize the service provider's MTAs to send mail on its behalf. For MSPs, such as ISPs, that have a wide variety of customers using the same MTA, steps are required to mitiate the risk of cross-customer forgery (see Section 11.4).
Relays are described in [RFC5598] Section 2.2.2. The authorization check generally precludes the use of arbitrary MTA relays between sender and receiver of an email message.
Within an organization, MTA relays can be effectively deployed. However, for purposes of this document, such relays are effectively transparent. The SPF authorization check is a check between border MTAs of different ADMDs.
For mail senders, this means that published SPF records have to authorize any MTAs that actually send across the Internet. Usually, these are just the border MTAs as internal MTAs simply forward mail to these MTAs for relaying.
The receiving ADMD will generally want to perform the authorization check at the boundary MTAs, including all secondary MXs. Internal MTAs (including MTAs that might serve both as boundary MTAs and internal relays from secondary MXs when they are processing the relayed mail stream) then do not perform the authorization test. To perform the authorization test other than at the boundary, the host that first transferred the message to the receiving ADMD have to be determined, which can be difficult to extract from the message header because (a) header fields can be forged or malformed, and (b) there's no standard way to encode that information such that it can be reliably extracted. Testing other than at the boundary is likely to produce unreliable results.
SPF results can be used in combination with other methods to determine the final local disposition (either positive or negative of a message. It can also be considered dispositive on its own.
SPF pass results can be used in combination with "white lists" of known "good" domains to bypass some or all additional pre-delivery email checks. Exactly which checks and how to determine appropriate white list entries has to be based on local conditions and requirements.
SPF fail results can be used to reject messages during the SMTP transaction based on either "MAIL FROM" or "HELO" identity results. This reduces resource requirements for various content filtering methods and conserves bandwidth since rejection can be done before the SMTP content is transferred. It also gives immediate feedback to the sender who might then be able to resolve the issue. Due to some of the issues described above in this section (Section 10), SPF based rejection does present some risk of rejecting legitimate email when rejecting based on "MAIL FROM" results.
SPF fail results can alternately be used as one input into a larger set of evaluations which might, based on a combination with other evaluation techniques, result in the email being marked negatively in some way (this might be via delivery to a special spam folder, modifying subject lines, or other locally determined means). Developing the details of such an approach have to be based on local conditions and requirements. Using SPF results in this way does not have the advantages of resource conservation and immediate feedback to the sender associated with SMTP rejection, but could produce fewer undesirable rejections in a well designed system. Such an approach might result in email that was not authorized by the sending ADMD being unknowingly delivered to end users.
Either general approach can be used as they both leave a clear disposition of emails. They are either delivered in some manner or the sender is notified of the failure. Other dispositions such as "dropping" or deleting email after acceptance are inappropriate because they leave uncertainty and reduce the overall reliabilility and utility of email across the Internet.
The "permerror" result (see Section 2.6.7) indicates the SPF processing module at the receiver determined that the retrieved SPF policy record could not be interpreted. This gives no true indication about the authorized use of the data found in the envelope.
As with all results, implementers have a choice to make regarding what to do with a message that yields this result. SMTP allows only a few basic options.
Rejection of the message is an option, in that it is the one thing a receiver can do to draw attention to the difficulty encountered while protecting itself from messages that do not have a definite SPF result of some kind. However, if the SPF implementation is defective and returns spurious "permerror" results, only the sender is actively notified of the defect (in the form of rejected mail), and not the receiver making use of SPF.
The less intrusive handling choice is to deliver the message, perhaps with some kind of annotation of the difficulty encountered and/or logging of a similar nature. However, this will not be desirable to operators that wish to implement SPF checking as strictly as possible, nor is this sort of passive problem reporting typically effective.
There is of course the option placing this choice in the hands of the operator rather than the implementer since this kind of choice is often a matter of local policy rather than a condition with a universal solution, but this adds one more piece of complexity to an already non-trivial environment.
Both implementers and operators need to be cautious of all choices and outcomes when handling SPF results.
SPF has been in development since the summer of 2003 and has seen deployment beyond the developers beginning in December 2003. The design of SPF slowly evolved until the spring of 2004 and has since stabilized. There have been quite a number of forms of SPF, some written up as documents, some submitted as Internet Drafts, and many discussed and debated in development forums. The protocol was originally defined in [RFC4408], which this document replaces.
[RFC4408] was designed to clearly document the protocol defined by earlier draft specifications of SPF as used in existing implementations. This updated specification is intended to clarify identified ambiguities in [RFC4408], resolve techincal issues identified in post-RFC 4408 deplyment experience, and document widely deployed extensions to SPF that have been developed since [RFC4408] was published.
This document updates and replaces RFC 4408 that was part of a group of simultaneously published Experimental RFCs (RFC 4405, RFC 4406, RFC 4407, and RFC 4408) in 2006. At that time the IESG requested the community observe the success or failure of the two approaches documented in these RFCs during the two years following publication, in order that a community consensus could be reached in the future.
SPF is widely deployed by large and small email providers alike. There are multiple, interoperable implementations.
For SPF (as documented in RFC 4408) a careful effort was made to collect and document lessons learned and errata during the two year period. The errata list has been stable (no new submissions) and only minor protocol lessons learned were identified. Resolution of the IESG's experiment is documented in [RFC6686].
Changes since RFC 4408 (to be removed prior to publication)