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+Network Working Group J. Lyon
+Request for Comments: 4407 Microsoft Corp.
+Category: Experimental April 2006
+
+
+ Purported Responsible Address in E-Mail Messages
+
+Status of This Memo
+
+ This memo defines an Experimental Protocol for the Internet
+ community. It does not specify an Internet standard of any kind.
+ Discussion and suggestions for improvement are requested.
+ Distribution of this memo is unlimited.
+
+Copyright Notice
+
+ Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2006).
+
+IESG Note
+
+ The following documents (RFC 4405, RFC 4406, RFC 4407, and RFC 4408)
+ are published simultaneously as Experimental RFCs, although there is
+ no general technical consensus and efforts to reconcile the two
+ approaches have failed. As such, these documents have not received
+ full IETF review and are published "AS-IS" to document the different
+ approaches as they were considered in the MARID working group.
+
+ The IESG takes no position about which approach is to be preferred
+ and cautions the reader that there are serious open issues for each
+ approach and concerns about using them in tandem. The IESG believes
+ that documenting the different approaches does less harm than not
+ documenting them.
+
+ Note that the Sender ID experiment may use DNS records that may have
+ been created for the current SPF experiment or earlier versions in
+ this set of experiments. Depending on the content of the record,
+ this may mean that Sender-ID heuristics would be applied incorrectly
+ to a message. Depending on the actions associated by the recipient
+ with those heuristics, the message may not be delivered or may be
+ discarded on receipt.
+
+ Participants relying on Sender ID experiment DNS records are warned
+ that they may lose valid messages in this set of circumstances.
+ Participants publishing SPF experiment DNS records should consider
+ the advice given in section 3.4 of RFC 4406 and may wish to publish
+ both v=spf1 and spf2.0 records to avoid the conflict.
+
+
+
+
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+Lyon Experimental [Page 1]
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+RFC 4407 Purported Responsible Address April 2006
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+
+ Participants in the Sender-ID experiment need to be aware that the
+ way Resent-* header fields are used will result in failure to receive
+ legitimate email when interacting with standards-compliant systems
+ (specifically automatic forwarders which comply with the standards by
+ not adding Resent-* headers, and systems which comply with RFC 822
+ but have not yet implemented RFC 2822 Resent-* semantics). It would
+ be inappropriate to advance Sender-ID on the standards track without
+ resolving this interoperability problem.
+
+ The community is invited to observe the success or failure of the two
+ approaches during the two years following publication, in order that
+ a community consensus can be reached in the future.
+
+Abstract
+
+ This document defines an algorithm by which, given an e-mail message,
+ one can extract the identity of the party that appears to have most
+ proximately caused that message to be delivered. This identity is
+ called the Purported Responsible Address (PRA).
+
+Table of Contents
+
+ 1. Introduction ....................................................2
+ 1.1. Conventions Used in This Document ..........................3
+ 2. Determining the Purported Responsible Address ...................3
+ 3. Security Considerations .........................................5
+ 4. Acknowledgements ................................................5
+ 5. References ......................................................5
+ 5.1. Normative References .......................................5
+ 5.2. Informative References .....................................5
+
+1. Introduction
+
+ Most e-mail flows relatively directly from a sender to a recipient,
+ with a small number of Mail Transfer Agents (MTAs) in between. Some
+ messages, however, are resent by forwarding agents, mailing list
+ servers, and other such software. These messages effectively result
+ in two or more mail transactions: one from the sender to the
+ forwarding agent, and another from the agent to the destination.
+
+ In some cases, messages travel through more than one of these agents.
+ This can occur, for example, when one mailing list is subscribed to
+ another, or when the address subscribed to a mailing list is a
+ forwarding service.
+
+ Further complicating the situation, in some cases the party that
+ introduces a message is not the author of the message. For example,
+ many news web sites have a "Mail this article" function that the
+
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+Lyon Experimental [Page 2]
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+RFC 4407 Purported Responsible Address April 2006
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+ public can use to e-mail a copy of the article to a friend. In this
+ case, the mail is "from" the person who pressed the button, but is
+ physically sent by the operator of the web site.
+
+ This document defines a new identity associated with an e-mail
+ message, called the Purported Responsible Address (PRA), which is
+ determined by inspecting the header of the message. The PRA is
+ designed to be the entity that (according to the header) most
+ recently caused the message to be delivered.
+
+ Note that the results of this algorithm are only as truthful as the
+ headers contained in the message; if a message contains fraudulent or
+ incorrect headers, this algorithm will yield an incorrect result.
+ For this reason, the result of the algorithm is called the "Purported
+ Responsible Address" -- "purported" because it tells you what a
+ message claims about where it came from, but not necessarily where it
+ actually came from.
+
+ This document does not prescribe any particular uses for the
+ Purported Responsible Address. However, [RFC4406] describes a method
+ of determining whether a particular MTA is authorized to send mail on
+ behalf of the domain contained in the PRA.
+
+1.1. Conventions Used in This Document
+
+ The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
+ "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
+ document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119].
+
+2. Determining the Purported Responsible Address
+
+ The PRA of a message is determined by the following algorithm:
+
+ 1. Select the first non-empty Resent-Sender header in the message.
+ If no such header is found, continue with step 2. If it is
+ preceded by a non-empty Resent-From header and one or more
+ Received or Return-Path headers occur after said Resent-From
+ header and before the Resent-Sender header, continue with step 2.
+ Otherwise, proceed to step 5.
+
+ 2. Select the first non-empty Resent-From header in the message. If
+ a Resent-From header is found, proceed to step 5. Otherwise,
+ continue with step 3.
+
+ 3. Select all the non-empty Sender headers in the message. If there
+ are no such headers, continue with step 4. If there is exactly
+ one such header, proceed to step 5. If there is more than one
+ such header, proceed to step 6.
+
+
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+Lyon Experimental [Page 3]
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+RFC 4407 Purported Responsible Address April 2006
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+ 4. Select all the non-empty From headers in the message. If there is
+ exactly one such header, continue with step 5. Otherwise, proceed
+ to step 6.
+
+ 5. A previous step has selected a single header from the message. If
+ that header is malformed (e.g., it appears to contain multiple
+ mailboxes, or the single mailbox is hopelessly malformed, or the
+ single mailbox does not contain a domain name), continue with step
+ 6. Otherwise, return that single mailbox as the Purported
+ Responsible Address.
+
+ 6. The message is ill-formed, and it is impossible to determine a
+ Purported Responsible Address.
+
+ For the purposes of this algorithm, a header field is "non-empty" if
+ and only if it contains any non-whitespace characters. Header fields
+ that are otherwise relevant but contain only whitespace are ignored
+ and treated as if they were not present.
+
+ Note that steps 1 and 2 above extract the Resent-Sender or Resent-
+ From header from the first resent block (as defined by section 3.6.6
+ of [RFC2822]) if any. Steps 3 and 4 above extract the Sender or From
+ header if there are no resent blocks.
+
+ Note that what constitutes a hopelessly malformed header or a
+ hopelessly malformed mailbox in step 5 above is a matter for local
+ policy. Such local policy will never cause two implementations to
+ return different PRAs. However, it may cause one implementation to
+ return a PRA where another implementation does not. This will occur
+ only when dealing with a message containing headers of questionable
+ legality.
+
+ Although the algorithm specifies how messages that are not in strict
+ conformance with the provisions of RFC 2822 should be treated for the
+ purposes of determining the PRA, this should not be taken as
+ requiring or recommending that any systems accept such messages when
+ they otherwise would not have done so. However, if a liberal
+ implementation accepts such messages and desires to know their PRAs,
+ it MUST use the algorithm specified here.
+
+ Where messages conform to RFC 822 rather than RFC 2822, it is
+ possible for the algorithm to give unexpected results. An RFC822
+ message should not normally contain more than one set of resent
+ headers; however, the placement of those headers is not specified,
+ nor are they required to be contiguous. It is therefore possible
+ that the Resent-From header will be selected even though a Resent-
+ Sender header is present. Such cases are expected to be rare or
+ non-existent in practice.
+
+
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+Lyon Experimental [Page 4]
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+RFC 4407 Purported Responsible Address April 2006
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+3. Security Considerations
+
+ The PRA, as described by this document, is extracted from message
+ headers that have historically not been verified. Thus, anyone using
+ the PRA for any purpose MUST be aware that the headers from which it
+ is derived might be fraudulent, malicious, malformed, and/or
+ incorrect. [RFC4406] describes one mechanism for validating the PRA.
+
+ A message's PRA will often be extracted from a header field that is
+ not normally displayed by existing mail user agent software. If the
+ PRA is used as part of a mechanism to authenticate the message's
+ origin, the message SHOULD NOT be displayed with an indication of its
+ authenticity (positive or negative) without the PRA header field also
+ being displayed.
+
+4. Acknowledgements
+
+ The PRA concept was first published in [CallerID]. It has been
+ refined using valuable suggestions from members of the MARID working
+ group.
+
+5. References
+
+5.1. Normative References
+
+ [RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
+ Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
+
+ [RFC2822] Resnick, P., "Internet Message Format", RFC 2822, April
+ 2001.
+
+5.2. Informative References
+
+ [CallerID] Microsoft Corporation, Caller ID for E-Mail Technical
+ Specification,
+ http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/safety/technologies/
+ senderid/resources.mspx
+
+ [RFC4406] Lyon, J. and M. Wong, "Sender ID: Authenticating E-Mail",
+ RFC 4406, April 2006.
+
+
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+Lyon Experimental [Page 5]
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+RFC 4407 Purported Responsible Address April 2006
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+Author's Address
+
+ Jim Lyon
+ Microsoft Corporation
+ One Microsoft Way
+ Redmond, WA 98052
+ USA
+
+ EMail: jimlyon@microsoft.com
+
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+Full Copyright Statement
+
+ Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2006).
+
+ This document is subject to the rights, licenses and restrictions
+ contained in BCP 78, and except as set forth therein, the authors
+ retain all their rights.
+
+ This document and the information contained herein are provided on an
+ "AS IS" basis and THE CONTRIBUTOR, THE ORGANIZATION HE/SHE REPRESENTS
+ OR IS SPONSORED BY (IF ANY), THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET
+ ENGINEERING TASK FORCE DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED,
+ INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE
+ INFORMATION HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED
+ WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
+
+Intellectual Property
+
+ The IETF takes no position regarding the validity or scope of any
+ Intellectual Property Rights or other rights that might be claimed to
+ pertain to the implementation or use of the technology described in
+ this document or the extent to which any license under such rights
+ might or might not be available; nor does it represent that it has
+ made any independent effort to identify any such rights. Information
+ on the procedures with respect to rights in RFC documents can be
+ found in BCP 78 and BCP 79.
+
+ Copies of IPR disclosures made to the IETF Secretariat and any
+ assurances of licenses to be made available, or the result of an
+ attempt made to obtain a general license or permission for the use of
+ such proprietary rights by implementers or users of this
+ specification can be obtained from the IETF on-line IPR repository at
+ http://www.ietf.org/ipr.
+
+ The IETF invites any interested party to bring to its attention any
+ copyrights, patents or patent applications, or other proprietary
+ rights that may cover technology that may be required to implement
+ this standard. Please address the information to the IETF at
+ ietf-ipr@ietf.org.
+
+Acknowledgement
+
+ Funding for the RFC Editor function is provided by the IETF
+ Administrative Support Activity (IASA).
+
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