[RndTbl] MTA domain keys (dk-filter)

Trevor Cordes trevor at tecnopolis.ca
Sun Dec 3 02:28:16 CST 2006


Is anyone else looking into (or has implemented) "domain keys" on their
MTA (sendmail, etc)?

For those who don't know yet, domain keys is another "grand solution to
spam", like SPF and DKIM.  It's being pushed by Yahoo, and almost any
mail sent to yahoo.com without DK will be tagged as Bulk.

http://antispam.yahoo.com/domainkeys

I just spent 4 hours making it all work (and figuring it all out) in FC5
on my firewall/router/mail-server/workstation/kitchen-sink.  My
impression is it's still pretty experimental, and there are no prebuilt
yum packages available for it.  The source for dk-filter (a sendmail
milter) is pretty buggy and obtuse.

But it seems to work finally.  I have it setup mainly for outgoing mail,
so my mail will get through to yahoo/etc ok.  I have the incoming check
options set to "allow no matter what", yet it provides some pretty cool
fine-level control.  One option in particular that looks very useful is:

# signaturemissing, miss
* The DNS TXT record for the sending host indicates that every message
should contain a DK signature, but none was found in the message.

I'm thinking I could reject all "miss" emails fairly safely.  If a
domain is setup properly and says "we always sign our emails", and if dk
is working, then an unsigned/badly-signed email purporting to be from
them must be a spoofed spam.  I wonder how many domains are marking
themselves as "we sign every email".  I wonder how you even indicate
that option in the TXT record; I haven't found a doc for that cryptic
code yet.  Likewise, if I'm confident dk is working well then turning
that option on may help the world by allowing dk-aware MTA's to drop
spam purporting to be from me!

I have some other observations/questions:

If I email to myself @yahoo.com, yahoo puts a little blue message under
the From: header saying domain keys were confirmed.  Neat!

For the emails to domains that I have to forward through Shaw (or they
get blocked by the RBL's because of my dyanamic IP), will Shaw introduce
headers that will cause the sig check to fail?  Certainly they must plop
in a Received: header? If so, how are domain keys to ever function
properly when an intermediate mail server is involved?  (Also would
apply to people sending to me where it goes to easydns, my backup MX
server, first.)

In that scenario, having domain keys would be worse than not because then
the normal-config dk-filter would reject the "corrupt" email.  If there
were no dk's at all, then the email would go through (albeit marked as
bulk).  I don't want a scenario where I may get *more* "lost" or
"dropped" emails, especially without bounce debugs!

Am I reading the functioning of domain keys correctly with the above
point?  Or perhaps the intermediate host is supposed to verify the dk
then regen a new one for the next hop?  But if the intermediate MTA
isn't dk-aware, it may just leave the original header intact causing the
final dk check to fail?



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