--- title: "Validate Email with DNS Records" tags: ['mail'] date: 2022-12-03 --- Email is a lot like real-life mail. You can send email to anyone, but you can also write whatever return address you\'d like. That is, it\'s pretty easy to pretend to be someone else via mail, and that was originally the case with email as well: email is just text, and you could just change your `From:` address to any email address you wanted! DKIM (Domain Keys Identified Mail) helps solve this issue. OpenDKIM will generate a public/private cryptographic key pair for your server. The public key will be made available publicly in your server\'s DNS records and the private key will be used to sign every single email that leaves the server. This means that people receiving mail from your server can now be absolutely sure that it originated from your server because their servers can check the cryptographic signature on the email with the public key! OpenDKIM ensures that email originated from the server it claims it did, but it does not ensure that it originated from the user account it claims it did. This easier problem is solved by server-side authorization settings. ## Installation ```sh apt install opendkim opendkim-tools ``` ## The Keys and Files We have to generate the DKIM keys and create some secondary files that will be required for our configuration. ### Generate the DKIM key Here we create directories for the OpenDKIM keys, generate them, and ensure they have the right file permissions. ```sh mkdir -p /etc/postfix/dkim opendkim-genkey -D /etc/postfix/dkim/ -d example.org -s mail chgrp opendkim /etc/postfix/dkim/* chmod g+r /etc/postfix/dkim/* ``` ### Create the key table Now we\'ll tell OpenDKIM where the newly generated keys are on the file system. ```sh echo "mail._domainkey.example.org example.org:mail:/etc/postfix/dkim/mail.private" > /etc/postfix/dkim/keytable ``` ### Create the signing table ```sh echo "*@example.org mail._domainkey.example.org" > /etc/postfix/dkim/signingtable ``` ### Adding trusted hosts ```sh echo "127.0.0.1 10.1.0.0/16 1.2.3.4/24" > /etc/postfix/dkim/trustedhosts ``` ## Configuring opendkim.conf Now we have all the raw material, so open up `/etc/opendkim.conf` and we can finalize our server settings. First, add these lines that will source the files we just created. ```yaml KeyTable file:/etc/postfix/dkim/keytable SigningTable refile:/etc/postfix/dkim/signingtable InternalHosts refile:/etc/postfix/dkim/trustedhosts Canonicalization relaxed/simple Socket inet:12301@localhost ``` There will already be an uncommented `Socket` directive, so delete, comment out or replace it with the above. ## Interfacing with Postfix There are a couple things we must add to the Postfix SMTP server settings to interface it with OpenDKIM. Specifically, we have to set our OpenDKIM server, which will be running on port `12301`, as a milter (mail filter). This is easy to do with the four commands below: ```sh postconf -e "myhostname = $(cat /etc/mailname)" postconf -e "milter_default_action = accept" postconf -e "milter_protocol = 6" postconf -e "smtpd_milters = inet:localhost:12301" postconf -e "non_smtpd_milters = inet:localhost:12301" ``` ## Restart and reload Postfix and DKIM Now that we have all our settings in place: ```sh systemctl restart opendkim systemctl enable opendkim systemctl reload postfix ``` ## Adding the DNS record! We are only one step away from having functioning OpenDKIM. We must add the DKIM public key to our server\'s DNS settings, so go ahead and open up your registrar\'s site or wherever your site\'s DNS settings are. The public key is found in the file `/etc/postfix/dkim/mail.txt`, but it will display as multiple lines and multiple quoted strings, which is annoying and hard to copy-and-paste into your registrar. To make things easier, run the following command to format the key in the way we need it for the DNS TXT entry: ```sh echo -e " v=DKIM1; k=rsa; $(tr -d " " }} On my registrar, this is how it is input, but on some registrars, it may be required to include your domain name as well as `mail._domainkey.example.org`. If you have your own DNS server, add a TXT entry as follows: ```txt mail._domainkey.example.org TXT v=DKIM1; k=rsa; p=ThatLongRandomSequenceOfLettersAndNumbersOfYours ``` ## Testing it out! Now we want to send an email to make sure that your emails will now be signed with OpenDKIM. ### Hostname If you\'ve followed these instructions, all emails from the domain **example.org** will now have a DKIM signature on them. If we send mail via the `mail` command, however, their domain of origin will be whatever your server\'s hostname is, which you may have set to something different than your domain. You can permanently change your hostname by changing it in `/etc/hostname` and rebooting, or you can just run `hostname example.org` to change it temporarily for testing. Either way, this will allow us to run the `mail` command as in [the SMTP article](../smtp). ```sh echo "Hi there. This is the text." | mail -s "Email from the server" your@emailaddress.com ``` ### More helpful troubleshooting. You can also go to [this site](https://appmaildev.com/en/dkim), which will help you troubleshoot any other DKIM problems if you mistyped something. ## DMARC DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication Protocol) is a protocol designed to give email domain owners the ability to protect their domain from unauthorized use. Add the dmarc user: useradd -m -G mail dmarc Open up your registrar or DNS settings again, and make a new TXT record like we did with DKIM, except now use the output from the following command: echo "_dmarc.$(cat /etc/mailname)" echo "v=DMARC1; p=reject; rua=mailto:dmarc@$(cat /etc/mailname); fo=1" The first line is the Host field. The latter is the TXT value. ### Sender Policy Framework Saving the easiest for last, we should add a TXT record for SPF, an email-authentication standard used to prevent spammers from sending messages that appear to come from a spoofed domain. cat /etc/mailname IP4= IP6= echo "v=spf1 mx a:mail.$(cat /etc/mailname) ip4:$IP4 ip6:$IP6 -all" **Note**: previous versions of this guide didn't ask you to specify the `ip4` and `ip6` mechanisms. If you don't include them, some email hosts (most notoriously gmail) will not accept mail from your server. The `IP4` and `IP6` values should be the same as what you set your [PTR records](../rdns) to. The output of `cat /etc/mailname` is the Host field. The output of the second command is the TXT value. Again, you can check [that site](https://appmaildev.com/en/spf) to make sure your DKIM, DMARC, and SPF entries are valid. That's it! ## Contribution - SPF mechanisms updated by Martin Chrzanowski \-- [website](https://m-chrzan.xyz), [donate](https://m-chrzan.xyz/donate.html)