This DMARC issue has finally hit our support forum today!
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [WINServer] Lists, Yahoo and DMARC
Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2014 12:51:38 -0400
From: Kevin M. Agard <lists(_at_)agard(_dot_)org>
Reply-To: <WINServer(_at_)winserver(_dot_)com>
To: WINServer(_at_)winserver(_dot_)com
Is anyone else running the wcListserver seeing bounces on messages to
Yahoo, MSN and Comcast due to these provider's DMARC configs??
What I am seeing is that any message originating from a @yahoo.com
address is being bounced by these domains with a “554 5.7.9: Message not
accepted for policy reasons” error messages.
Interestingly enough, although Yahoo, MSN and Comcast all bounce these
messages, it is only messages from Yahoo that bounce. Messages
originating from MSN and Comcast make it through fine.
KMA
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On 4/12/2014 3:56 PM, Miles Fidelman wrote:
Folks,
We (really I) support perhaps 2 dozen small email lists, for a bunch
of community groups (PTOs, churches, neighborhood groups) - mostly the
legacy of previously running a small hosting firm, and still having
the machines sitting in a data center. The kinds of groups with lots
of non-technical users who have email accounts on Yahoo, hotmail, AOL,
Comcast, and such. The lists range in size from tiny (5 person boards
of directors) to maybe 1000 (high school parents).
Yahoo's implementation of it's new DMARC policy has been an absolute
disaster. Kind of messes things up when a few days before tax filings
are due, and in parallel with the Heartbleed mess, (not to mention the
work that pays the bills), roughly 1/3 of the addresses on almost all
of the lists start bouncing mail from yahoo addresses - particularly
when yahoo's postmaster didn't have a clue what was going on (my
initial thought was - oh heck, need to get back on their whitelist).
Luckily gmail seems not to be honoring the Yahoo's p=reject policy, at
least so far, or things would be a LOT worse.
Still trying to figure out a reasonable fix for this, as it looks like
lots of other listmasters are trying to do - and doesn't help that I'm
running a less common list package (sympa).
Anyway - one of my reactions to this is that something is really
broken about the process by which DMARC and Yahoo's policy have been
foisted on the larger Internet community - and in particular IETF's
role or lack thereof. Specifically:
- DMARC is an ad-hoc group that assembled with a "common goal was to
develop an operational specification to be introduced to the IETF for
standardization"
(http://dmarc.org/about.html)
- DMARC.org defines the "DMARC Base Specification" with a link to
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-kucherawy-dmarc-base/ - an IETF
document
- the referenced document is an informational Internet draft, that
expires in October of this year, that starts with "This memo presents
a proposal for a scalable mechanism by which a mail sending
organization can express,.
- It's also being presented as mature - through such publicity
statements as "DMARC standard now protects almost two-thirds of the
world's 3.3 billion consumer mailboxes worldwide"
(http://dmarc.org/news/press_release_20140218.html)
In essence, DMARC is being represented as a mature, standards-track
IETF specification - with the implication that it's been widely
vetted, and is marching through the traditional experimental ->
optional -> recommended -> mandatory steps that IETF standards go
through.
In reality:
- DMARC was developed by a tiny number of people, all of whom work for
very large ISPs
- as far as I can tell, all input from the broader community - notably
mailing list developers and operators was roundly ignored or dismissed
(the transcript is really clear on this)
- while DMARC is at least partially tested, deploying and honoring
"p=reject" messages is brand new, and has wreaked tremendous damage
across the net
- as far as I can tell, those who are behind DMARC are taking the
position "it's not our problem" (see discussions on
dmarc-discuss(_at_)dmarc(_dot_)org and dmarc(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org) - and there
is nary a
Yahoo representative to be seen anywhere
From an operational perspective, this is akin to a large player
publishing a corrupt nameserver database or routing update - and then
actively resting attempts to clean up the mess (which, in effect is
what Yahoo did by updating their DMARC record to p=reject).
The situation strikes me as incredibly perverse and broken - the more
so that the perpetrators are presenting this as blessed by the IETF
standards process.
It strikes me that IETF should weigh in on this in a formal fashion -
if only to make it very clear that IETF is not responsible for this
debacle, and perhaps to exert some moral influence on the perpetrators
to back off and help clean up the mess they've created.
On a broader scope - this sort of points out a really big hole in our
consensus governance process - when one bad actor can inflict damage
across the entire Internet, apparently, with impunity.
Miles Fidelman
--
HLS