Re: [ietf-smtp] IETF Policy on dogfood consumption or avoidance - SMTP version

[Hector Santos <[e-mail]>]

Viktor,

I believe we are in agreement with the same principles. But maybe not. 
Not sure. I already implied local policy always prevails.

That said, I believe the IETF "operational decision" was incorrect and 
inconsistent. To honor it, it may set a negative precedent for future 
implementer trust and confidence in protocol design.  Is it advocating 
others to follow? After all, an SDO did it, so why not across all 
systems?

We may have to explicitly embed this clause in the protocol:

      A "MUST NOT" protocol element MAY be overridden with "550" Policies.

That is the implication we have here.  Keeping in mind that these new 
550 policies are generally based on some "Bad Guy" presumptions. It 
did not explicitly exist before RFC5321. Previously, 550 was like a 
"Catch all" reply code.   Since 2003, with GreyListing, SPF, DKIM/SSP, 
DKIM/ADSP, DKIM/DMARC, etc, the beauty of these new protocols to help 
deal with "bad guys," they were ALL consistent with the written SMTP 
specifications.  They did not change the SMTP protocol except for one 
thing.  I was instrumental during RFC2821BIS in proposing and Klensin 
adding section 7.9. "Scope of Operation of SMTP Servers."   With the 
advent of the new DNS TXT-based applications, we needed new SMTP 
justifications for rejections.  The bar was raised for SMTP compliancy 
and correction.

    7.9.  Scope of Operation of SMTP Servers

    It is a well-established principle that an SMTP server may refuse to
    accept mail for any operational or technical reason that makes sense
    to the site providing the server.  However, cooperation among sites
    and installations makes the Internet possible.  If sites take
    excessive advantage of the right to reject traffic, the ubiquity of
    email availability (one of the strengths of the Internet) will be
    threatened; considerable care should be taken and balance maintained
    if a site decides to be selective about the traffic it will accept
    and process.

    In recent years, use of the relay function through arbitrary sites
    has been used as part of hostile efforts to hide the actual origins
    of mail.  Some sites have decided to limit the use of the relay
    function to known or identifiable sources, and implementations SHOULD
    provide the capability to perform this type of filtering.  When mail
    is rejected for these or other policy reasons, a 550 code SHOULD be
    used in response to EHLO (or HELO), MAIL, or RCPT as appropriate.

What it needs to update here is to include DATA because of ADSP and 
DMARC.

Again, now of the new augmented protocols did not change SMTP.

For me, being consistent allows for raising the bar.  In regards to 
the new ietf mail policy, if it was consistent with this new 550 
policy to reject legitimate ip literals for a yet to be explained 
non-reason, it would be more consistent and acceptable,  if it also 
consistently enforced a correct FQDN using a new 550 policy 
justification to reject IP::DOMAIN mismatches.  After all a "real" MTA 
is expected to use rDNS to obtain the correct FQDN for the sender 
machine.  No?  That is not always optimal. Small lite weight SMTP 
clients exist.  PTR slows them down.  What if there is no PTR record? 
   After all, again, more inconsistency, are we promoting PTR records 
now? For a certain period there, we were discouraging them, in fact, I 
think SPF tried to deprecate it. I am not going to bother to confirm 
but I recall the debates.

Consistency with everyone "expected" to play by the same rules is 
paramount for maximum interoperability and with minimum support. IMO, 
this mail.ietf.org odd "operational decision" could drastically change 
things because now others will follow.

I am still trying to understand why the legit IP-literal is being 
rejected in the first place.  I don't see any legit reason for it.  Do 
you?

Thanks

-- 
HLS




On 12/17/2019 2:24 PM, Viktor Dukhovni wrote:
>> On Dec 17, 2019, at 2:02 PM, Hector Santos <hsantos=[e-mail]> wrote:
>>
>> But here is I see it:
>>
>> 1) Yes, everyone agree the response text needs to be fixed up, but
>>
>> 2) It is in fact a violation of RFC2821/5321 specification when a rejection is applied by a server to a perfectly valid ip-literal per specification, and
>
> It is not in fact.  A receiving MTA can refuse your email for any reason.
> As a matter of RFC-compliance it MUST recognize address literals as
> valid syntax (which it did by returning a 550 rather than 500 or 501),
> but is then free to reject them on policy grounds.
>
>> 3) It lacks consistency in its operational decision on what Client Mail/Host Names are rejected or accepted.
>
> This is also not true.  It consistently rejects address literals because
> doing so carries little risk of false positives (as already explained on
> the ietf-smtp list, where the more technical discussion belongs).  "Real"
> MTAs use domain names.  It is as simple as that.
>
>> If a rejection is going to apply to ip-literals, hence enforcing a FQDN, then at the very least, it should validate the FQDN.
>
> No, because enough "Real" MTAs use HELO domain names that don't map to
> their own IP address, or any address at all.  So the risk of FPs is
> too high.
>
> There is no a priori discrimination here, it is all just based on what
> one can get away with to reduce spam without blocking a non-trivial
> volume of legitimate email.
>
>> The mail.ietg.org servers appears to accept any FQDN including a existing
>> FQDN which does not match the connecting IP address and a non-existing FQDNs:
>
> As they must for operational reasons.
>
>> Yet, it does not validate the FQDN. Why?
>
> Because, much as one might want to, too many "Real" MTAs (sending
> legitimate traffic) have FQDNs that would fail verification.
>

-- 
HLS