I was misinterpretation the language to require detection whether any host 
existed in the zone, rather than checking whether there is a host name which 
matches the domain name.  Thank you to Murray for straightening me out.

 

That aside, we still have a problem.   The specification is applying SPF-type 
logic to an address that has no necessary connection to SPF.   A typical 
advertising message, sent be a third party, will pass SPF using the third-party 
sender’s domain.    The message From address becomes a label to identify the 
client organization in some manner, and possibly to identify the identity of 
the marketing campaign.  The domain name used for that purpose may not exist 
anywhere else, often does not accept replies, and may not exist as a mail 
server domain anywhere.    Consequently, these may very well be unregistered 
domains, but it may be reasonable to insist that domain owners get them 
registered to avoid false positives from the test.   The least disruptive test 
will be for NS.   Anything stricter will produce false positives.

 

The logic that seems to work is:

-          Check SPF and DKIM for domain alignment.   If the DMARC criteria are 
satisfied by either method, the message domain does not need to exist, because 
it has been validated.

-          If the message does not pass DMARC alignment, then we need to look 
for a DMARC policy to see if P/SP/NP applies.  If NP applies, and NS does not 
exist, the NP policy is applied.

 

Using the example domain from the document, I am assuming that we are trying to 
block all three of these non-existent domains:

-          T4x.gov.example

-          Spammer.t4x.gov.example

-          Spammer.tax.gov.example

If the goal is only to block t4x.gov.example, then the current NP algorithm is 
slightly less problematic.

 

Doug Foster

 

 

From: Tim Wicinski [mailto:[email protected]] 
Sent: Thursday, November 19, 2020 11:04 PM
To: [email protected]
Cc: IETF DMARC WG
Subject: Re: [dmarc-ietf] Second WGLC for draft-ietf-dmarc-psd: Definition of NP

 

Doug

 

In looking for domain presence most folks will look at the domain itself.  
There are a few web tools to enumerate

such as https://dnschecker.org/ 

 

Some examples

https://dnschecker.org/#MX/dmarc.org

https://dnschecker.org/#TXT/dmarc.org

https://dnschecker.org/#TXT/_dmarc.dmarc.org

 

There are unix tools - such as 'dig' - which are also quite useful.

 

hope this helps

tim

 

 

On Thu, Nov 19, 2020 at 10:44 PM Douglas E. Foster 
<[email protected]> wrote:

Time to show my ignorance again.

 

How do I check a domain for presence or absence of A, AAAA, or MX records?

I thought most domains were protected from enumeration, so one had to know a 
name to find out if it is defined

 

DF

 

 


  _____  


From: "Douglas E. Foster" <[email protected]>
Sent: 11/19/20 9:27 PM
To: "IETF DMARC WG" <[email protected]>
Subject: RE: [dmarc-ietf] Second WGLC for draft-ietf-dmarc-psd: Definition of NP

 

Thank you for the pointer Eric.

 

Can someone explain why the chosen algorithm, which requires testing multiple 
conditions, is preferable to a single query for a name server record?   
Minimizing DNS traffic has been part of our recent discussion, and minimizing 
software complexity is always a good thing.

 

Can someone also explain why the DMARC appendix takes such a strong stance 
against all queries for non-existent domains, regardless of technique?  It 
seems like the philosophical incompatibilities need to be addressed before both 
documents advance.

 

DMARC is specified only as a test for the RFC5322.From domain.   
RFC5321.MailFrom domains may also be non-existent.  They will return SPF NONE, 
but that is an ambiguous result, and SPF has no organization default mechanism. 
  

*       Is there data to indicate whether evaluators have found that checking 
the RFC5321.MailFrom for non-existence is useful?   
*       Suppose that the NP policy becomes generalized, and a domain has 
asserted a "must-exist" DMARC policy.   Should a non-existent subdomain used in 
the RFC5321.MailFrom address be treated skeptically?

I can imagine a scenario where a spammer uses a bogus subdomain of a legitimate 
organization, in an attempt to get whitelisted by spam filters which primarily 
evaluate the RFC5321.MailFrom address.   This attack could be paired with an 
unrelated and non-DMARC RFC5322.From address which is newly minted or otherwise 
not generally known to be suspicious,   So my instinct is that some extension 
of DMARC to the SMTP address will be beneficial.

 

Doug Foster

 

 

 

 


  _____  


From: "Chudow, Eric B CIV NSA DSAW (USA)" <[email protected]>
Sent: 11/19/20 5:31 PM
To: 'Doug Foster' <[email protected]>, 'IETF DMARC WG' 
<[email protected]>
Cc: "'[email protected]'" <[email protected]>
Subject: RE: [dmarc-ietf] Second WGLC for draft-ietf-dmarc-psd: Definition of NP

 

Section 2.7. defines a non-existent domain as "a domain for which there is an 
NXDOMAIN or NODATA response for A, AAAA, and MX records. This is a broader 
definition than that in NXDOMAIN [RFC8020]." This should be sufficient for 
determining that the domain is not intended to be used and therefore could have 
a more stringent policy applied.

 

The idea of looking for a "mail-enabled domain" based on if an "MX record 
exists or SPF policy exists" is interesting. Although there may be domains that 
send email but not receive email and so may not have an MX record. Also, even 
if there is no SPF record, the domain may still send email, but then it might 
be held to a more stringent DMARC policy that would further penalize it for not 
having an SPF record.

 

Also, for the revision of the document I like the way that the three parts of 
the experiment are now laid out more clearly. My only comment is that the title 
of Appendix A is overly specific to just one of the experiments and so should 
be broader.

 

Thanks,

 

Eric Chudow

DoD Cybersecurity Mitigations

 

From: Doug Foster <[email protected]>

Sent: Tuesday, November 17, 2020 9:46 AM

To: 'IETF DMARC WG' <[email protected]>

Cc: [email protected]

Subject: Re: [dmarc-ietf] Second WGLC for draft-ietf-dmarc-psd: Definition of NP

 

I did not see a definition of a "non-existent domain" (the np policy).   A 
definition is needed.

 

To my thinking, the obvious rule should be to query for a NS record for the 
domain.  If the record exists, then the domain owner could create a DMARC 
record for that domain, or could create a default entry for the domain at the 
organizational level.  If no record exists, it is because the domain owner 
chose to not create one.

 

However, the DMARC Bis document conflicts strongly with this.  In section A.4, 
it suggest several ways to do a test of this type, then repudiates all of them. 
 NS lookup is not one of the mentioned options.

 

There is a possible second-level policy test for a "mail-enabled domain".  I 
would define that test as "MX record exists or SPF policy exists".    That 
could be an additional option to NP, but should not be a replacement for it.

 

PSD for DMARC clearly intends for the NP policy to be a general solution to a 
general problem.    If there are still objections to it becoming a general 
solution, this should be addressed soon.

 

Doug Foster

 

 

From: dmarc [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Tim Wicinski

Sent: Friday, November 13, 2020 1:42 PM

To: IETF DMARC WG

Cc: [email protected]

Subject: [dmarc-ietf] Second WGLC for draft-ietf-dmarc-psd

 

 

All

 

During the IESG reviews of draft-ietf-dmarc-psd, there were several issues 
raised with some of the document.   Most of them are editorial but the one big 
item was the description of the Experiment.   The chairs sat down and broke out 
the experiment section into three separate experiments, and included language 
on how to capture the data to confirm how the experiment worked. 

 

It's enough of a change that we wanted to do a second working group last call 
to make sure the working group agrees with our changes. The diff of the current 
version with the previous version is here: 

 

 
<https://www.ietf.org/rfcdiff?url1=draft-ietf-dmarc-psd-08&url2=draft-ietf-dmarc-psd-09>
 
https://www.ietf.org/rfcdiff?url1=draft-ietf-dmarc-psd-08&url2=draft-ietf-dmarc-psd-09

 

This starts a *one* week second working group last call for  
draft-ietf-dmarc-psd

Please review the changes and offer up comments to the working group.

 

This working group last call 20 November 2020

 

Thanks,

 

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