Fergie's Tech Blog

DKIM: A Solution Only If It's Deployed

Stephen Withers writes on iTWire.com.au:

DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM), a proposal for authenticating the source of email messages, has received preliminary backing from the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the body that determines the protocols used on the Internet.

The proposed standard involves mail servers digitally signing outgoing messages. Receiving mail servers would check the signature on each incoming message by using DNS (domain name server system) to fetch the public key for the originating domain name.

How does this stop spam, phishing and other forms of bogus email? It doesn't prevent them being sent, but it will interfere with their delivery - but only when so many legitimate mail servers have implemented DKIM that people are prepared to accept that messages failing DKIM checks will not be delivered.

posted by Fergie @ 5/23/2007 10:28:00 PM