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Email Authentication Schemes - Friends or Foes? 54

Posted by Cliff from the will-the-cure-be-worse-than-the-disease dept.
jtprice writes "At a time when spam levels have exceeded 80%, there's growing momentum behind Microsoft's email CallerID, the SPF effort, Yahoo!'s DomainKeys, and the IETF's new MARID Working Group initiatives to address various email abuse problems including spam, joe-jobbing, phishing, and so on. Sendmail has already implemented DomainKeys and CallerID. 10,000+ domains have turned on SPF now. Where the heck are we going with this? Are these efforts at cross purposes, confusing at best or likely to be consolidated? Seems to be less about the end of spam and more about the end of open, uniform, standards-based email as we know it. Apparently the people behind these initiatives are getting together for the first time for something called the Open Email Accountability Symposium next month, at the Inbox Email Conference in San Jose, with the intent of outlining their proposals and answering questions. Any thoughts about all of this, or hard questions that should be asked of these people? Is the email dilemma creating just another monopoly opportunity to force email into proprietary territory?"
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Email Authentication Schemes - Friends or Foes? More

Email Authentication Schemes - Friends or Foes?

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  • It's worth it... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by danielrm26 ( 567852 ) * on Friday May 14, 2004 @06:40PM (#9157591) Homepage
    "Is the email dilemma creating just another monopoly opportunity to force email into proprietary territory?"

    Perhaps, but this doesn't make it a bad idea. Any good idea or technology can be taken advantage of; that in itself shouldn't keep those with good intentions from trying to bring about change for the better.
  • ..but my corporate overlords got hit by Sasser and I couldn't get a new certificate :(

  • It still won't work (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Because millions of small-company and household e-mail servers will never have the funds to implement any proprietary system. Make it public domain, and it will be worse- the spammers will just hack it.

    • Re:It still won't work (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Nasarius ( 593729 ) on Friday May 14, 2004 @07:32PM (#9157954)
      Right. Just like they hacked Apache or PGP or SSL or...
      Open standards and peer review are profoundly *good* things.

  • no real solution on the orizon (Score:3, Insightful)

    by AnalogFile ( 772030 ) on Friday May 14, 2004 @06:56PM (#9157721)
    I've been thinking about the problem. And have looked around for the different proposals. There's been a mailing list for ng mail with many interesting ruminations. But then it was sinked with spam :-(

    IMO there main alternative is:
    1) a solution compatible with original RFC (that is it does not rule out any sender that the original spec would permit)
    2) a completely new and different system. Redesigned from scratch.

    Obviously a solution is not a solution if it may have a false positive (block nonspam).
    False negatives are just a matter of efficiency.

    Methink option 1 is not possible. And this has the added bonus of giving us the chance for a visionary change. But it's unclear if we can afford the time it takes. As the problem is really becoming urgent (much more urgent than the 32bit limitation in IP adress space. Expecially because NAT is addressing it very well.)

    There are MANY proposals that use SMTP and add up on the requirements actually ruling out cases that were originally legal. These I really think should be avoided. But I'm affraid that's were many will likely go because they are fast to deploy.

    • Re:no real solution on the orizon (Score:5, Insightful)

      by CatLord42 ( 657659 ) <{catlord42} {at} {yahoo.com}> on Friday May 14, 2004 @07:07PM (#9157792) Journal
      IMO there main alternative is:
      1) a solution compatible with original RFC (that is it does not rule out any sender that the original spec would permit)
      2) a completely new and different system. Redesigned from scratch.
      Even if we could completely revamp SMTP, it still sits on top of TCP/IP (etc.), and there will still be ways to get around any protections we could add to SMTP.

      Unfortunately, I think it will take some major overhauling of the Internet and its core protocols to solve this problem. And that means lots of work, lots of new equipment and lots of new applications, all at enormous expense.

      So, what's worse, loss of bandwidth, over-burdened mail servers and everyone spending time deleting junk out of their inboxes, or everyone spending a significant amount of money, users for new e-mail programs, companies for the same programs, new mail servers and routers, ISPs and backbone providers for expensive new infrastructure, and none of it possible until all the protocols are reworked, let's say, five years from now?

      • Re:no real solution on the orizon (Score:4, Interesting)

        by AnalogFile ( 772030 ) on Friday May 14, 2004 @09:22PM (#9158637)
        Even if we could completely revamp SMTP, it still sits on top of TCP/IP (etc.)

        Not exact. If we are revamping there's no need to sit on TCP. It may be TCP or UDP or something completely new. Or it may be even just be a non problem.
        - If the protocol assumes a connection and does not depend on it being anything in particular (technically: if it's an appllication level protocol), than it'll sit on any connection oriented protocol. That's exactly what the ISO layering is supposed to mean.
        - It is possible to design a completelly new connection layer protocol. TCP is having it's own problems. True most of these have been addressed with a handfull of extensions. Reno is good and Vegas is even better. But big speed*RTT links are still problematic. And links are going to become much faster and with possibly bigger RTTs. We should not abandon TCP. But maybe we could start thinking alternatives.

        and there will still be ways to get around any protections we could add to SMTP.

        There'll always be ways to get around anything, probably. Down this line of thinking there's no solution at all. But we may come to a point where getting around is not worth doing.

        I think it will take some major overhauling of the Internet and its core protocols to solve this problem.

        Ageed. That is exactly the point in my post. But if we take that lane, we may get extra benefits. Mail-ng need not just be mail. We may think messaging here, instead of mail. Mailing lists can be designed in upfront. And news too. Maybe even chatting and instant messaging. And did you notice people is now using SMTP to do what FTP was designed for (remember FTP supports push and even sidewise transfers, even if today it's mostly used in pull mode)?

        And that means lots of work, lots of new equipment and lots of new applications, all at enormous expense.

        Maybe. Maybe not. We should keep those possible consequences in mind. Lots of work in SW development may be a non problem (not for the F/OSS community, at least. I do not care what that means for an individual company that's not going to share). Lots of equipment I doubt. If we can sit on IP and care not what version of it is below us, than the routing infrastructure need not change. The firewalling/natting/tunneling part may need some fixes. But these are mostly SW and generally very close to the endpoints, not really a big deal if we are doing a revamp. Expenses? Again: SW upgrade at the endpoints is not a big cost. Not if you are on the sharing side of the fences. It is not zero (not for large companies with thousands of servers and more clients, for example). But it needn't cost more than any other SW upgrade.

        none of it possible until all the protocols are reworked, let's say, five years from now

        This sentence is the one I agree upon. That's what I worried about in my post. This may take time. And the problem is now so much urgent that people may be unwilling to wait. The worse that can happen is a partial solution. It would slow down a revamp (NAT slowing IPv6 is an example. And we risk the mail 'solution' is much worse than NAT is).
        • If the protocol assumes a connection and does not depend on it being anything in particular (technically: if it's an appllication level protocol), than it'll sit on any connection oriented protocol. That's exactly what the ISO layering is supposed to mean.
          Prehaps that is what it is supposed to mean, but two things
          - IP and friends came out long before ISO and their layer model. IP is based on the DOD model; and while DOD has less layers they dont exactly match up. Not really important, however
          - SMTP uses
          • HELO/EHLO wants a hostname, and usually one that can be resolved to the address that the connection is from

            What about this [tesco.net]?

            From (in SMTP), From, To, CC, etc in RFC822 expect either UUCP routes

            What about this [tesco.net]?

            Of course those links may be wrong. I'm no big expert. Surely they seem convincing.

            Cisco not supporting something (relevent to their product line) means it wont become wildly used

            This is sadly true. And that's probably a sign CISCO should either make an extremely strong public commitme
            • FGA: Perhaps they are correct. Perhaps SMTP servers should be less anal about HELO/EHLO's. But many are, and we are talking about reality: how things actually are, not what the standard says, or what a better standard would be... Part of their argument is that given the state of the world, neither the SMTP client or server has a compleate view of reality, so judging the peer based on their view of reality is flawed... If we are building a replacement to IP, then we want to build one where peers can have a v

    • Off topic, but... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Nasarius ( 593729 ) on Friday May 14, 2004 @07:35PM (#9157977)
      Expecially because NAT is addressing it very well.

      No, no it's not. NAT is a quick-fix that just complicates matters.

      • NAT both complicates and simplify matters. It depends. From the point of view of keeping people connected in a 32bit adress space it's doing a hell of a good job. From the point of view of IPv6 deployment ... surely it did slow that down. But that's exactly because it's doing well. Of course there also are many other aspects to consider. But this is nother story.
        • connected in a 32bit adress space it's doing a hell of a good job

          Oh? Try using VPN a lot and pulling your hair out because of address space collisions.

          • True. But without NAT all the hosts that today are on reserved adress space (you only get collision on those) would just be off the internet. So do it. Disconnect all the hosts that have not a public IP or get public IPs for all the hosts. And then go VPN. I'm pretty sure you'll miss NAT as soon as you realize you are not going to get sufficient IPs.

            Yes, I know. There are providers with routing that is not sufficiently transparent to let you VPN even between public IPs. But it's mostly broken configurati

            • Re:Off topic, but... (Score:2, Flamebait)

              by man_ls ( 248470 )
              We could solve the IP allocation problem by deallocating the space from countries that abuse their connections and placing them in a data embargo.

              IANA should have the authority to reallocate addresses as a method of punishment. I.e., deallocate all of Nigeria's address space.

              All of Africa, and most of Asia, for that matter.
    • Check this one:

      http://cr.yp.to/im2000.html [cr.yp.to] ..."Internet Mail 2000" ... no really. :^) Basically, you (user) don't receive the email. You receive a notification: "your email is available". Now: you have to download the email from the site that notified you.

      Imagine: I am a spammer. I must now host a server which has the capability to receive $millions of hits from all my wonderful spam-receiving customers. This is the first thing which begins shifting the burden of sending of email back onto the sende
      • IM2000 does sound like a good idea; it's basically the way I send inconveniently large attachments, in fact (zip, upload to temp directory on web server, send an email "covering note" with the URL, ask recipient to let me know when they've downloaded the file so I can delete it).

        The immediate down side I can think of is that the sender knows (by observing their web server logs) that you received and read that message (or at least that you received it with a POP3-equivalent offline mail reader, which would

        • The immediate down side I can think of is that the sender knows (by observing their web server logs) that you received and read that message [...] This is possibly a good thing (debatable) if it's legit email, but is a bad thing if it's spam (the spammer now knows that joe@joe.com is a valid address which is read by a human).

          Eh? Just because somebody or something goes to fetch the "sent mail" doesn't mean that the mail is read by human. I don't care if the message is send directly to me or via some hosted

      • Imagine: I am a spammer. I must now host a server which has the capability to receive $millions of hits from all my wonderful spam-receiving customers. This is the first thing which begins shifting the burden of sending of email back onto the sender.

        The problem with this idea is that, on a per e-mail basis, spammers actually need fewer resources than non-spammers. Compare a spammer whose domain sends 1 Million e-mails a day, and a legitimate domain who also sends 1 Million e-mails a day. For the legiti

    • Alternate Solutions (Score:2, Insightful)

      by lachlan76 ( 770870 )
      Backwards compatibility and security can't be combined. Just like you can't simultaneously find the position and momentum of a particle with perfect accuracy, any attempt to make a certified mail system backwards compatible with existing systems means that spam will still exist. So far the most promising method of slowing spam is cryptographic challenges. By sending the client a simple cryptographic challenge which can be solved in anywhere from 10 seconds to 1 minute, spam can be slowed significantly, s

  • Spam Filters (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Vokbain ( 657712 ) *
    I think spam filtering should be left up to the user.

    There are plenty of client side systems that work well; I use Apple's Mail. Maybe 2 spams a day gets through to my main inbox (out of several hundred incoming spams a day).

    • Client-side filtering should be last step (Score:4, Insightful)

      by TBone ( 5692 ) on Friday May 14, 2004 @09:08PM (#9158565) Homepage
      The problem is, in many places, people still pay per quantity of bandwidth or time online. Saying "filter it at the client" doesn't do anything to stop the spam from being sent to the user, and still requires the user to retreive and parse the message before deciding it's spam and filing it in the circular bin.

      No, client-side spam filtering should be the last line of defense against spam. Spam should be killed off before it ever reaches a mailbox, final or intermediate, by the servers that handle the mail.
      • Filter at the client works for SPF since it does its check before the mail is received (after Mail From:, before Data). Microsoft CallerID has the problem you describe, MS also codes its DNS info in XML which makes it so big that it requires a TCP session.

        SPF rules.
  • What per chance would lead you to the conclusion that a "single" standard is a "proprietary solution"?

    Are you paranoid?

    The proposed solutions are [for the most part] standards based and they're also "open" in nature.

    Personally, I'm going to orient my servers toward the IETF/Marid standard; but you have the "freedom" to choose and implement whichever standard you choose.

    The fact that a pseduo-"standard" is being settled on in this realm is progress (in my opinion).

  • The question answers itself (Score:3, Insightful)

    by kimba ( 12893 ) on Friday May 14, 2004 @08:53PM (#9158502)
    The person that asked the question provided the answer. The IETF MARID working group is designed to take all the existing proposals, find the best, and settle on it.

    This article is just making something out of nothing.
  • unless we change our expectations for email.

    What do we expect:

    1. To be able to send email from anywhere

    2. To be able to use various "from" addresses, irrespective of from where we are sending.

    3. To be able to cheaply register new domain names. The problem can only be solved if we accept limitations on how we send email.

    The fundamental problem is not authentication. A spammer can easily set up a valid domain name and use it to send email "from". The cost of this is minimal (an *.org.uk domain is about

    • You are only scratching the surface of the problem.

      What do we expect:

      Defining the expectations is a big task by itself. Those doing some serius work on it identifyed many many different requirements. And of course many of them are contradictory.

      The fundamental problem is not authentication. A spammer can easily set up a valid domain name and use it to send email "from". The cost of this is minimal

      Traceability. Autentication. Anonymous posting. Privacy. Each of these is a research task in and by i

  • CallerID for email boycott (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 14, 2004 @09:35PM (#9158709)
    The concerns presented by the boycott of Microsoft's Caller ID [boycott-em...ler-id.org] still haven't been addressed by Microsoft. It's still patent-encumbered, still far too verbose and still not used by anyone besides Microsoft and Amazon.

    Stick to SPF, give DomainKeys a try once someone actually publishes some info about it. Skip caller ID.

  • An RFC could help here?

  • OT: were's ESR? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by AnalogFile ( 772030 )
    Sorry if this is really OT but ...
    I just was curious to see if Eric Raymond had some post/opinion on this subject. I went and checked it out and ...

    Anybody noticed he's *completely disappeared* after posting "The Luxury of Ignorance: Part Deux" on february 29?

    No more posts on his site. Neither in the writing section, nor in the blog. Cannot google out any reference to a travel or something. Nothing.

    And looking at his back records, he's not used to being so silent for such a long time. Expecially not

  • SPF is Email Authentication (Score:4, Informative)

    by jgardn ( 539054 ) <jgardn@alumni.washington.edu> on Friday May 14, 2004 @11:57PM (#9159335) Homepage Journal
    SPF only authenticates mail as being approved mail from a domain. In itself, this only prevents joe jobbing and phishing, but domains can still send spam.

    As SPF adoption grows, there will be two types of email: authenticated and unauthenticated. Authenticated mail will consist of both spam and legitimate mail. Unauthenticated mail will be just like the mail we are sending around today.

    What does authenticated mail get us? As we can track mail down to the owners, we will begin to set up a trust system. DNS block lists will become viable. The owners of domain names can protect or abuse their domain names as they see fit.

    Eventually, there will be a system where domain names will have value again. If I don't abuse my home domain, and only use it for legitimate purposes, people will not add my name to black lists. If my domain has sent a large number of emails with a very low score of spam, it will be more legitimate than one who has sent only a few emails or has sent mostly spam.

    SPF is only the first step in stopping unsolicited email. Once it is in place, the next step -- accountability -- is easy to implement.

    The beauty of SPF is that it doesn't invalidate email as it is now. Participation is optional. Those who are early adopters get an early boost, so the incentive is there to adopt it early on. But email as it is now will not be stopped.

    • "If my domain has sent a large number of emails with a very low score of spam, it will be more legitimate than one who has sent only a few emails or has sent mostly spam."

      What happens when $VIRUS turns your domain name into a spamfest? If you're supporting any normal users at all, you're likely going to find it hard to maintain that reputation.

      • > What happens when $VIRUS turns your domain name
        > into a spamfest?

        You get blacklisted, as you should be.

        > If you're supporting any normal users at all,
        > you're likely going to find it hard to maintain
        > that reputation.

        Securing your domain is your responsibility.
  • Seriously...I've been using it for a while now. It works well. It's bloody simple. Why more people don't use it, I don't know.

    • Re:What's wrong with OpenPGP? (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      There are two obvious reasons.

      1. Very few people know about it.

      2. Assuming that www.openpgp.org is the home page for this then there is too much digging for most folks to bother installing it.

      Here are some obvious questions I couldn't easily find answers to.

      1. Does it work with Kmail? (which I use at home)
      2. Does it work with Eudora? (which is what I recommend for my windows using friends/family.)
      3. I have a few Mac using friends, will this work for them?
      4. Does it work with my ISP's java based email
      • OpenPGP [openpgp.org] is a standard implemented by a few programs including PGP [pgp.com] (non-free), and GnuPG (aka GPG) [gnupg.org] (Free). GnuPG support is either integrated into or supported via plugins on Kmail, Eudora, Mutt, Outlook, and many other clients. See http://www.gnupg.org/(en)/related_software/fronten ds.html [gnupg.org] for more details. There are a couple of Mac related links there. About the last two, GPG's privacy lies in the key, and thus you wouldn't want anyone else to be able to use your key -- they could sign messages as you ot

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