Category: Postfix

 

 

HOW TO VIEW AN EMAIL SUBHEADER

In this example, the “Sender” mt.kb.user@gmail.com wants to send an email to the “Receiver” user@example.com. The sender composes the email at gmail.com, and user@example.com receives it in the email client Apple Mail.

Here is the example header:

From: Media Temple user (mt.kb.user@gmail.com)
Subject: article: How to Trace a Email
Date: January 25, 2011 3:30:58 PM PDT
To: user@example.com
Return-Path: <mt.kb.user@gmail.com>
Envelope-To: user@example.com
Delivery-Date: Tue, 25 Jan 2011 15:31:01 -0700
Received: from po-out-1718.google.com ([72.14.252.155]:54907) by cl35.gs01.gridserver.com with esmtp (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from <mt.kb.user@gmail.com>) id 1KDoNH-0000f0-RL for user@example.com; Tue, 25 Jan 2011 15:31:01 -0700
Received: by po-out-1718.google.com with SMTP id y22so795146pof.4 for <user@example.com>; Tue, 25 Jan 2011 15:30:58 -0700 (PDT)
Received: by 10.141.116.17 with SMTP id t17mr3929916rvm.251.1214951458741; Tue, 25 Jan 2011 15:30:58 -0700 (PDT)
Received: by 10.140.188.3 with HTTP; Tue, 25 Jan 2011 15:30:58 -0700 (PDT)
Dkim-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=domainkey-signature:received:received:message-id:date:from:to :subject:mime-version:content-type; bh=+JqkmVt+sHDFIGX5jKp3oP18LQf10VQjAmZAKl1lspY=; b=F87jySDZnMayyitVxLdHcQNL073DytKRyrRh84GNsI24IRNakn0oOfrC2luliNvdea LGTk3adIrzt+N96GyMseWz8T9xE6O/sAI16db48q4Iqkd7uOiDvFsvS3CUQlNhybNw8m CH/o8eELTN0zbSbn5Trp0dkRYXhMX8FTAwrH0=
Domainkey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=message-id:date:from:to:subject:mime-version:content-type; b=wkbBj0M8NCUlboI6idKooejg0sL2ms7fDPe1tHUkR9Ht0qr5lAJX4q9PMVJeyjWalH 36n4qGLtC2euBJY070bVra8IBB9FeDEW9C35BC1vuPT5XyucCm0hulbE86+uiUTXCkaB 6ykquzQGCer7xPAcMJqVfXDkHo3H61HM9oCQM=
Message-Id: <c8f49cec0807011530k11196ad4p7cb4b9420f2ae752@mail.gmail.com>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=”—-=_Part_3927_12044027.1214951458678″
X-Spam-Status: score=3.7 tests=DNS_FROM_RFC_POST, HTML_00_10, HTML_MESSAGE, HTML_SHORT_LENGTH version=3.1.7
X-Spam-Level: ***
Message Body: This is a KnowledgeBase article that provides information on how to find email headers and use the data to trace a email.

HOW TO ANALYZE AN EMAIL HEADER

From

• This displays who the message is from, however, this can be easily forged and can be the least reliable.

Subject

• This is what the sender placed as a topic of the email content.

Date

• This shows the date and time the email message was composed.

To

• This shows to whom the message was addressed, but may not contain the recipient’s address.

Return-Path

• The email address for return mail. This is the same as “Reply-To:”.

Envelope-To

• This header shows that this email was delivered to the mailbox of a subscriber whose email address is user@example.com.

Delivery Date

• This shows the date and time at which the email was received by your (mt) service or email client.

Received

• The received is the most important part of the email header and is usually the most reliable. They form a list of all the servers/computers through which the message traveled in order to reach you.The received lines are best read from bottom to top. That is, the first “Received:” line is your own system or mail server. The last “Received:” line is where the mail originated. Each mail system has their own style of “Received:” line. A “Received:” line typically identifies the machine that received the mail and the machine from which the mail was received.

Dkim-Signature & Domainkey-Signature

• These are related to domain keys which are currently not supported by (mt) Media Temple services. You can learn more about these by visiting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DomainKeys.

Message-id

• A unique string assigned by the mail system when the message is first created. These can easily be forged.

Mime-Version

• Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) is an Internet standard that extends the format of email. Please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIME for more details.

Content-Type

• Generally, this will tell you the format of the message, such as html or plaintext.

X-Spam-Status

• Displays a spam score created by your service or mail client.

X-Spam-Level

• Displays a spam score usually created by your service or mail client.

Message Body

• This is the actual content of the email itself, written by the sender.

FINDING THE ORIGINAL SENDER

The easiest way for finding the original sender is by looking for the X-Originating-IP header. This header is important since it tells you the IP address of the computer that had sent the email. If you cannot find the X-Originating-IP header, then you will have to sift through the Received headers to find the sender’s IP address. In the example above, the originating IP Address is 10.140.188.3.

Once the email sender’s IP address is found, you can search for it at http://www.arin.net/. You should now be given results letting you know to which ISP (Internet Service Provider) or webhost the IP address belongs. Now, if you are tracking a spam email, you can send a complaint to the owner of the originating IP address. Be sure to include all the headers of the email when filing a complaint.

create the script with jenkins group : /pathtoscript.sh

vim /etc/sudoers

add the following row to the conf sudoers file

jenkins    ALL=(ALL)  NOPASSWD: /pathtoscript.sh

be carefull only root can read write execute , jenkins can read and execute not write

chmod 750 /pathtoscript.sh

 

A majority of organizations use multiple email service providers and every single one of them requires their own email authentication tools. If your email service provider supports SPF, you will need to include their SPF mechanism in your own SPF record.

However, you can run into errors which can result in the non-delivery of your emails. One such error is the SPF Permerror. Today, we will show you how to fix an SPF permerror so your SMTP is secured.

What is an SPF Permerror?

An SPF permerror or ‘SPF Permanent Error’ is one of the most common SPF errors that comes up when the domain’s SPF record could not be properly interpreted resulting in the non-delivery of emails.

An SPF Permerror can occur due to these reasons:

• If the SPF record has a syntax error
• If a domain has multiple SPF records
• If the SPF evaluates more than 10 DNS mechanism lookups in an SPF record

What Is SPF Permerror – “Too Many DNS Lookups”?

This is the most common error out of the three types of SPF permerror. SPF has put several safeguards in place to make sure that you do not have any timeouts issues. An SPF will evaluate 10 DNS mechanisms in an SPF record. They include: a, mx, ptr, exists, include, redirect. If these DNS records exceed more than 10, it will raise an SPF Permerror. When an SPF permerror is raised, you will have to remove a few lookups/mechanisms.

What Does SPF Validation Failed Mean?

An SPF validation error comes up when the Sender Policy Framework (SPF) validation for the sender’s domain is not successful. To prevent these issues, an email admin should make sure that their domain for the domain registrar is set up properly. These are some common reasons an SPF validation error takes place:

• Multiple SPF Records
• SPF Validation is Not Available
• More than 10 DNS Lookups
• PTR Mechanism Usage
• Macro is Invalid
• Multiple Fallback Scenarios

A warning SPF validation failed will be given if your SPF record is not set properly. You can check invalid SPF record examples here.

Office 365 SPF Permerror

To prevent spoofing and get great email delivery, it is advisable to set up SPF in Microsoft (News – Alert) Office 365. To avoid SPF Permerror Office 365, you can go through these points.

• Only one SPF record is enough for your domain
• If you have a subdomain, create separate records
• To avoid getting a permerror, make sure the there are no DNS lookups over 10

An Office 365 SPF permerror can be avoided by following these points. An SPF error such as the SPF permerror and SPF temperror can give you a huge problem for delivering your emails. This way you won’t have any deliverability issues.

How to Fix An SPF Permerror?

SPF Flattening

SPF flattening is a process to flatten order of an SPF record to a flattened record that contains less than 10 DNS lookups/mechanisms. It is also called an SPF record compression. By using a flattened SPF record, you can flatten the number of DNS querying mechanisms/lookups to 1.

The SPF flattening works by removing the ‘a,’ ‘mx,’ and ‘include’ mechanisms to make a simplified SPF record and reduces the amount of DNS lookups. Without doing this, there will be an unnecessary amount of DNS lookups.

Other mechanisms such as ip4 and ip6 are added as they do not use any SPF lookups.

Avoiding Unnecessary ‘include’ Statements

An ‘include’ statement is a mechanism that is used to redirect the DNS lookup to verify authorized IPs of another domain’s SPF record. These ‘include’ statements in the original SPF records will count towards the limit of 10.

Removing Reference to Invalid and Unused Domains

If a domain is unused by you or your partner’s vendor then any ‘include’ statements that redirect the SPF check to a domain. To reduce the number of DNS lookups, you should always make sure that any inactive domains in your SPF record should be removed.

You can also use these methods to avoid an SPF permerror:

• Replacing the ‘include’ statement with ip4 and ip6 mechanisms when possible
• You can remove mechanisms that refer to the same domain
• Limit the use of PTR mechanisms as its usage can result in numerous DNS lookups
• Use SPF record checks

You can also know more by referring to the SPF FAQs.

Handling Forged Emails Using SPF

Scammers and spammers forge a lot of emails by using numerous domains and email addresses or even legitimate emails and domains to fool users into believing that the email was from a known entity or a person that they know. An SPF can be used for handling forged email and help detect and reject these forged emails.

The SPF protocol allows a domain to authorize the hosts that will use its domain name. Also, the host can be used to configure and check the authorization. This way, an SPF can reduce the number of forged emails quite significantly.

To Conclude

We hope this article gave you some information regarding how to fix an SPF permerror for better protection of our SMTP. An SPF permerror is an important SPF error that should be resolved as soon as possible. Resolving these errors as soon as possible will give you better SPF authentication and significant rise in email deliverability.