spf-discuss
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Re: specification 02.9.7 released

2004-02-13 00:37:34
On Sun, 2004-02-08 at 22:47, David Brodbeck wrote:

I'm not clear on why this isn't an issue.  Let's say I get mail that
claims to be from ziggy.glyphic.com.  If I do a lookup on that machine,
but don't step up to the parent domain, I don't have an SPF record to
judge the validity of the message by.  Maybe I'm just unclear on the
concept, or missing something really obvious here.

--Mark Shewmaker <mark(_at_)primefactor(_dot_)com> wrote:
If ziggy.glyphic.com doesn't resolve at all, then most MTAs would reject
emails with a mail from from there on that basis alone, before any spf
tests, so the lack of an spf record would be a non-issue.

If ziggy.glyphic.com it does resolve because of DNS wildcarding, then
presumably the *.glyphic.com domain owners would also have wildcarded
spf records as well.


I'm in agreement with Mark. Also, I think there are really good reasons to NOT allow SPF checks to be done on higher-level domains. It makes sense to most people that corp.domain.com should be a logical part of domain.com, but that daemon.co.uk is not the same entity as co.uk. (Yes some top-level domains have A records, try http://cc/ and http://tv/ :) So, you cannot logically/predictably tell where one domain should be governed by the same policy as its parent... it should be explicitly verboten.

Unfortunately this means all A records also need SPF records. I wonder if something like this could give the proper result:
@       IN      A       10.2.3.4
@       IN      TXT     "v=spf1 a mx -all"
*       IN      TXT     "v=spf1 -all"
www     IN      A       10.2.3.4
support IN      A       10.2.3.5
support IN      TXT     "v=spf1 a mx -all"

In a case like this would "www" have an A but no TXT, or would a lookup on www (TXT) give you the wildcard?

Interesting. Anyway it's probably safer to SPF anything that has either MX or A including *
--
Greg Connor <gconnor(_at_)nekodojo(_dot_)org>