Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) M. Kucherawy Request for Comments: 6577 Cloudmark, Inc. Updates: 5451 March 2012 Category: Standards Track ISSN: 2070-1721Authentication-Results Registration Update for Sender Policy Framework (SPF) Results
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RFC 6577 Auth-Results SPF Erratum March 2012
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
[AUTHRES] defined a new header field for electronic mail messages that presents the results of a message authentication effort in a machine-readable format. That Request for Comments created a registry of results for a few message authentication mechanisms, one of which was the Sender Policy Framework [SPF]. The registry contains one entry that is inconsistent with the latter specification, which was noted in an erratum [ERR2617] filed with the RFC Editor. This memo updates the IANA registries accordingly.
2. Keywords
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 [KEYWORDS].
3. New 'fail' Definition
The new "fail" result, replacing the existing "hardfail" result for [SPF] (and thus also for [SENDER-ID]) has the same definition for "hardfail" that was used in Section 2.4.2 of [AUTHRES], namely:
4. IANA Considerations
This section enumerates requested actions of IANA, per [IANA].
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RFC 6577 Auth-Results SPF Erratum March 2012 4.1. Addition of 'Status' ColumnsIANA has amended the Email Authentication Methods and Email Authentication Result Names registries, both in the Email Authentication Parameters group, by adding to each a column called "Status" that will indicate for each entry its current status. Legal values for these columns are as follows:
4.2. Update to Result Names
[AUTHRES] listed "hardfail" as the result to be used when a message fails an [SPF] evaluation. However, this latter specification used the string "fail" to denote such failures.
5. Security Considerations
This memo corrects a registry error. It is possible that older implementations will not recognize or use the corrected entry. Thus, implementers are advised to support both result strings for some period of time. However, it is known that some implementations are already using the SPF-defined result string.
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RFC 6577 Auth-Results SPF Erratum March 2012 6. References 6.1. Normative References[AUTHRES] Kucherawy, M., "Message Header Field for Indicating
6.2. Informative References
[ERR2818] "RFC Errata", Errata ID 2818, RFC 5451,
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RFC 6577 Auth-Results SPF Erratum March 2012 Appendix A. Examples in RFC 5451It should be noted that this update also applies to the examples in [AUTHRES], specifically the one in Appendix B.5. The error there [ERR2818] is not corrected by this update, which only deals with the normative portions of that specification and the related IANA registrations. However, it is assumed one could easily see what needs to be corrected there.
Appendix B. Acknowledgements
The author wishes to acknowledge the following for their review and constructive criticism of this proposal: S. Moonesamy, Scott Kitterman.