DomainKeys: Proving and Protecting Email Sender Identity

Email spoofing - the forging of another person's or company's email address to get users to trust and open a
message - is one of the biggest challenges facing both the Internet community and anti-spam technologists
today. Without sender authentication, verification, and traceability, email providers can never know for certain
if a message is legitimate or forged and will therefore have to continually make educated guesses on behalf of
their users on what to deliver, what to block, and what to quarantine, in the pursuit of the best possible user
experience.
DomainKeys is a technology proposal that can bring black and white back to this decision process by giving
email providers a mechanism for verifying both the domain of each email sender and the integrity of the
messages sent (i.e,. that they were not altered during transit). And, once the domain can be verified, it can be
compared to the domain used by the sender in the From: field of the message to detect forgeries. If it's a
forgery, then it's spam or fraud, and it can be dropped without impact to the user. If it's not a forgery, then the
domain is known, and a persistent reputation profile can be established for that sending domain that can be
tied into anti-spam policy systems, shared between service providers, and even exposed to the user.
For well-known companies that commonly send transactional email to consumers, such as banks, utilities,
and ecommerce services, the benefits of verification are more profound, as it can help them protect their
users from "phishing attacks" - the fraudulent solicitation for account information, such as credit card numbers
and passwords, by impersonating the domain and email content of a company to which users have entrusted
the storage of these data. For these companies, protecting their users from fraud emails translates directly
into user protection, user satisfaction, reduced customer care costs, and brand protection.
For consumers, such as Yahoo! Mail users or a grandparent accessing email through a small mid-western
ISP, industry support for sender authentication technologies will mean that they can start trusting email again,
and it can resume its role as one of the most powerful communication tools of our times.

Standardization and License Terms

Yahoo! Inc. (Yahoo!) is fully committed to making DomainKeys Identified Mail an open Internet standard. In
conjunction with Cisco, Alt-N Technologies, AOL, Brandenburg Internetworking, Cisco, EarthLink, IBM,
Microsoft, PGP Corporation, Sendmail, StrongMail Systems, Tumbleweed, and VeriSign, Yahoo! submitted
two Internet-Drafts for publication with the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force), DomainKeys Identified
Mail (DKIM) and DKIM Sender Signing Policy. For historical reference, Yahoo! has submitted the
DomainKeys framework as an Internet-Draft entitled "draft-delany-domainkeys-base-03.txt. Yahoo! hopes that
DomainKeys Identified Mail will advance through the IETF Internet standards process and ultimately be
approved as an IETF Internet Standard. Meanwhile, Yahoo! has established license terms that apply to the
DomainKeys Intellectual Property (Patents and Software). The Yahoo! DomainKeys Patent License
Agreement can be found here:
Yahoo! DomainKeys Patent License Agreement
In accordance with RFC2026, Yahoo! has also submitted the above license statement to the IETF as an IPR
Disclosure. Have license feedback?

Reference Implementation
In addition to the Internet-Draft, Yahoo! has developed a reference implementation for DomainKeys that can
be plugged into Message Transfer Agents (MTAs), such as qmail. A version of this software has been
released and is available at http://domainkeys.sourceforge.net/. Additionally, Yahoo! is working with Sendmail
to develop a DomainKey implementation for their popular MTA (both the commercial and freeware versions).
In fact, Sendmail, Inc. has released an open source implementation of the Yahoo! DomainKeys specification
for testing on the Internet and is actively seeking participants and feedback for this Pilot Program.

How DomainKeys Works

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 How it Works - Sending Servers
There are two steps to signing an email with DomainKeys:

1. Set up: The domain owner (typically the team running the email systems
within a company or service provider) generates a public/private key pair to use for
signing all outgoing messages (multiple key pairs are allowed). The public key is
published in DNS, and the private key is made available to their DomainKey-
enabled outbound email servers. This is step "A" in the diagram to the right.
2. Signing: When each email is sent by an authorized end-user within the
domain, the DomainKey-enabled email system automatically uses the stored
private key to generate a digital signature of the message. This signature is then
pre-pended as a header to the email, and the email is sent on to the target
recipient's mail server. This is step "B" in the diagram to the right.

How it Works - Receiving Servers

There are three steps to verifying a signed email:

1. Preparing: The DomainKeys-enabled receiving email system extracts the

signature and claimed From: domain from the email headers and fetches the
public key from DNS for the claimed From: domain. This is step "C" in the diagram
to the right.
2. Verifying: The public key from DNS is then used by the receiving mail
system to verify that the signature was generated by the matching private key. This proves that the email was
truly sent by, and with the permission of, the claimed sending From: domain and that its headers and content
weren't altered during transfer.
3. Delivering: The receiving email system applies local policies based on the results of the signature
test. If the domain is verified and other anti-spam tests don't catch it, the email can be delivered to the user's
inbox. If the signature fails to verify, or there isn't one, the email can be dropped, flagged, or quarantined. This
is step "D" in the diagram on the right.

In general, Yahoo! expects that DomainKeys will be verified by the receiving email servers. However, end-
user mail clients could also be modified to verify signatures and take action on the results.

Frequently Asked Questions

 How will this help stop spam?

 How will this help stop fraud/phishing attacks?
 Won't spammers just sign their messages with DomainKeys?
 What does DomainKeys verify?
 Why sign the entire message?
 Does DomainKeys encrypt each message?
 What public/private key technology is used for DomainKeys?
 Who issues the public/private key pairs required by DomainKeys?
 Does DomainKeys require signing of the public key by a Certificate Authority (CA)?
 How are DomainKeys revoked?
 Why not just use S/MIME?
 How does DomainKeys work with mailing lists?
 Who implements DomainKeys?
 Which mail transfer agents (MTAs) support DomainKeys?
 How do I deploy DomainKeys?
 I don't use my domain's SMTP server to send email. How do I use DomainKeys?

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 How can I send you feedback?

How will this help stop spam?

Several ways. First, it can allow receiving companies to drop or quarantine unsigned email that comes from
domains that are known to always sign their emails with DomainKeys, thus impacting spam and phishing
attacks. Second, the ability to verify sender domain will allow email service providers to begin to build
reputation databases that can be shared with the community and also applied to spam policy. For example,
one ISP could share their "spam vs. legit email ratio" for the domain www.example.com with other ISPs that
may not yet have built up information about the credibility and "spamminess" of email coming from
www.example.com. Last, by eliminating forged From: addresses, we can bring server-level traceability back
to email (not user-level - we believe that should be a policy of the provider and the choice of the user).
Spammers don't want to be traced, so they will be forced to only spam companies that aren't using verification
solutions.
Back to Questions

How will this help stop fraud/phishing attacks?

Companies that are susceptible to phishing attacks can sign all of their outgoing emails with DomainKeys and
then tell the world this policy so that email service providers can watch and drop any messages that claim to
come from their domain that are unsigned. For example, if the company www.example.com signs all of its
outgoing email with DomainKeys, Yahoo! can add a filter to its SpamGuard system that drops any unsigned
or improperly signed messages claiming to come from the domain www.example.com, thus protecting tens of
millions of example.com's customers or prospective customers from these phishing attacks.
Back to Questions

Won't spammers just sign their messages with DomainKeys?

Hopefully! If they do, they'll make it easier for the Internet community to isolate and drop/quarantine their
messages using the methods described above in "How will this help stop spam?" Eliminating the uncertainty
of "did this email really come from the domain example.com?" will facilitate a whole range of anti-spam
solutions.
Back to Questions

What does DomainKeys verify?

DomainKeys examines the From: and Sender: headers' domain to protect the user and deliver the best
possible user experience. Desktop mail clients like Microsoft Outlook show these headers in their user
interfaces. If the user establishes their trust based on the these domains, then so should any system built to
verify whether that trust is warranted.
Back to Questions

Why sign the entire message?

DomainKeys signs the entire message to allow the receiving server to also verify that the message wasn't
tampered with or altered in transit. By signing the headers and the body, DomainKeys makes it impossible to
reuse parts of a message from a trusted source to fool users into believing the email is from that source.
Back to Questions

Does DomainKeys encrypt each message?

DomainKeys does not encrypt the actual message - it only pre-pends a "digital signature" as a header.
Back to Questions

What public/private key technology is used for DomainKeys?

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DomainKeys currently uses an RSA public/private key method. The key length is decided by the domain
owner.
Back to Questions

Who issues the public/private key pairs required by DomainKeys?

The domain owner, or an agent or service provider acting on their behalf, should generate the key pairs that
are used for their DomainKeys-enabled mail system.
Back to Questions

Does DomainKeys require signing of the public key by a Certificate Authority (CA)?
DomainKeys does not require a CA. Much like a trusted Notary Public, Certificate Authorities are used in
public/private key systems to sign, or "endorse," public keys so that the external users of public keys can
know that the public keys they receive are truly owned by the people who sent them. Since DomainKeys
leverages DNS as the public key distribution system, and since only a domain owner can publish to their
DNS, external users of DomainKeys know that the public key they pull is truly for that domain. The CA is not
needed to verify the owner of the public key - the presence in that domain's DNS is the verification. However,
it is possible that Certificate Authorities may become a valuable addition to the DomainKeys solution to add
an even greater level of security and trust.
Back to Questions

How are DomainKeys revoked?

DomainKeys allows for multiple public keys to be published in DNS at the same time. This allows companies
to use different key pairs for the various mail servers they run and also to easily revoke, replace, or expire
keys at their convenience. Thus, the domain owner may revoke a public key and shift to signing with a new
pair at any time.
Back to Questions

Why not just use S/MIME?

S/MIME was developed for user-to-user message signing and encryption and by design should be
independent of the sending and receiving servers. We believe that DomainKeys should be a natural server-to-
server complement to S/MIME and not a replacement. Additionally, since S/MIME is used by many security-
conscious industries, we need to ensure that the two technologies can work together without breaking each
other. Finally, S/MIME is not yet supported by many of the email services, client software, and server software
used across the Internet, and in Yahoo!'s opinion, that standardization effort would be much more difficult
than the standardization of DomainKeys.
Back to Questions

How does DomainKeys work with mailing lists?

Mailing lists that do not change the content or re-arrange or append headers will be DomainKey compatible
with no changes required. Mailing lists that change the message and headers should re-sign the message
with their own private key and claim authorship of the message.
Back to Questions

Who implements DomainKeys?

DomainKeys will typically be implemented/enabled by the team within a company, ISP, or email service
provider that deploys and runs the incoming and outgoing mail servers. Some companies may have service
providers that handle their email. As MTA vendors add support for DomainKeys to their products, the
implementation of DomainKeys will become simpler.
Back to Questions

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 Which mail transfer agents (MTAs) support DomainKeys?
Sendmail has released a milter implementation for both the commercial and freeware versions of their MTA. A
Qmail patch, an Exim version as well as a qpsmtpd plugin are also available. CERN, the creators of the
WWW has released a C# library for use in MS Exchange 2003. Port 25's PowerMTA, Etype.net's acSMTP,
ActivSoftware's XMServer, OmniTI's Ecelerity, StrongMail, and Alt-N Technology's MDaemon MTA for
Windows all have DomainKey versions of their software. Finally, Yahoo! has released an open source
reference implementation for DomainKeys that can be plugged into other MTAs.
Back to Questions

How do I deploy DomainKeys?

After installing a DomainKey aware MTA, there are several key distribution options from which to choose.
Once chosen, the public key portion should be published to your domain's _domainkey subdomain's TXT
record, and the private key inserted into your MTA. You can test your DNS record policy and selector, and
there are several autoresponding email addresses to test your implementations.

I don't use my domain's SMTP server to send email. How do I use DomainKeys?
DomainKeys relies on the domain administrator to authorize the use of the domain in an email. If you can not
use the domain's authorized SMTP server because of port 25 blocking, you have a number of options.

 You should encourage your domain to accept submission services on port 587. Your domain
administrator should try to control authorization of the domain. Giving users a path to submit mail will help do
this. Yahoo! Mail recently began offering a submission server on port 587.
 You may be able to convince the domain administrator to grant you a user specific key. With a
DomainKey, it should be possible to sign your messages using your mail client or any submission server. In
fact, you could ask your submission service if you could give them a private key to use to sign your domain's
mail.
 You could consider using other headers to convey your identity. For instance, the Reply-to: header
allows a recipient's mail client to choose an address to which replies should be sent. The Sender: header
defines the address that injects the message into the SMTP stream. You might consider sending your
message From: your domain, with the Sender: header set to the address of your submission service. Be
aware however, that this strategy may be viewed suspiciously by anti-spam filters, as it may become a tactic
for spammers and phishers.
 Finally, you could choose to send unauthenticated mail. While this will not be a good long term
strategy, it will certainly take quite a while before the vast majority of Internet email is authenticated. If you
choose this path, you should carefully monitor the amount of authenticated mail over time to ensure that this
strategy does not impact the deliverability of your email.