What is SPF?
Sender Policy Framework (SPF) is an email authentication method designed to detect forging sender addresses during the delivery of the email. SPF alone, though, is limited to detecting a forged sender claim in the envelope of the email, which is used when the mail gets bounced. Only in combination with DMARC can it be used to detect the forging of the visible sender in emails (email spoofing), a technique often used in phishing and email spam.
Why is SPF important?
SPF records prevent sender address forgery by protecting the envelope sender address, allowing the domain administrator to specify which mail servers are allowed to send mail from their domain.
SPF allows the receiving mail server to check during mail delivery that mail claiming to come from a specific domain is submitted by an IP address authorized by that domain’s administrators. The list of authorized sending hosts and IP addresses for a domain is published in the DNS records for that domain.
Principles of operation
Further information: Sender Rewriting Scheme (SRS)
The Simple Mail Transfer Protocol permits any computer to send an email claiming to be from any source address. This is exploited by spammers and scammers who often use forged email addresses, making it more difficult to trace a message back to its source, and easy for spammers to hide their identity to avoid responsibility. It is also used in phishing techniques, where users can be duped into disclosing private information in response to an email purportedly sent by an organization such as a bank.
SPF allows the owner of an Internet domain to specify which computers are authorized to send a mail with envelope-from addresses in that domain, using Domain Name System (DNS) records. Receivers verifying the SPF information in TXT records may reject messages from unauthorized sources before receiving the body of the message. Thus, the principles of operation are similar to those of DNS-based blackhole lists (DNSBL), except that SPF uses the authority delegation scheme of the Domain Name System. Current practice requires the use of TXT records, just as early implementations did.
For a while, a new record type (SPF, type 99) was registered and made available in common DNS software. The use of TXT records for SPF was intended as a transitional mechanism at the time. The experimental RFC, RFC 4408, section 3.1.1, suggested that “an SPF-compliant domain name SHOULD have SPF records of both RR types”. The proposed standard, RFC 7208, says “use of alternative DNS RR types was supported in SPF’s experimental phase but has been discontinued”.
The envelope-from address is transmitted at the beginning of the SMTP dialog. If the server rejects the domain, the unauthorized client should receive a rejection message, and if that client was a relaying message transfer agent (MTA), a bounce message to the original envelope-from address may be generated. If the server accepts the domain, and subsequently also accepts the recipients and the body of the message, it should insert a Return-Path field in the message header to save the envelope-from address.
While the address in the Return-Path often matches other originator addresses in the mail header such as the header-from, this is not necessarily the case, and SPF does not prevent forgery of these other addresses such as the sender header.
Spammers can send an email with an SPF PASS result if they have an account in a domain with a sender policy, or abuse a compromised system in this domain. However, doing so makes the spammer easier to trace.
The main benefit of SPF is to the owners of email addresses that are forged in the Return-Path. They receive large numbers of unsolicited error messages and other auto-replies. If such receivers use SPF to specify their legitimate source IP addresses and indicate FAIL results for all other addresses, receivers checking SPF can reject forgeries, thus reducing or eliminating the amount of backscatter.
SPF has potential advantages beyond helping identify unwanted mail. In particular, if a sender provides SPF information, then receivers can use SPF PASS results in combination with an allow list to identify known reliable senders. Scenarios like compromised systems and shared sending mailers limit this use.
Reasons to implement
If a domain publishes an SPF record, spammers and phishers are less likely to forge emails pretending to be from that domain, because the forged emails are more likely to be caught in spam filters that check the SPF record. Therefore, an SPF-protected domain is less attractive to spammers and phishers. Because an SPF-protected domain is less attractive as a spoofed address, it is less likely to be delisted by spam filters and so ultimately the legitimate email from the domain is more likely to get through.
FAIL and forwarding
SPF breaks plain message forwarding. When a domain publishes an SPF FAIL policy, legitimate messages sent to receivers forwarding their mail to third parties may be rejected and/or bounced if all of the following occur:
- The forwarder does not rewrite the Return-Path, unlike mailing lists.
- The next-hop does not allowlist the forwarder.
- This hop checks SPF.
This is a necessary and obvious feature of SPF – checks behind the “border” MTA (MX) of the receiver cannot work directly.
Publishers of SPF FAIL policies must accept the risk of their legitimate emails being rejected or bounced. They should test (e.g., with a SOFTFAIL policy) until they are satisfied with the results. See below for a list of alternatives to plain message forwarding.
How Libraesva can help?
SPF is a standard that allows declaring which IP addresses are allowed to send an email on behalf of your domain.
If you already have an SPF record you should add an entry for your Libraesva ESG, if you don’t have an SPF record please consider having one.