Sender ID e-mail spec submitted to standards body

June 25, 2004, 08:46 AM —  IDG News Service — 

Microsoft Corp. has submitted a draft technical specification of the e-mail authentication system Sender ID to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) for consideration as an industry-wide standard, the Redmond, Washington software company announced this week.

Sender ID combines Microsoft's Caller ID for E-mail (which was submitted to the IETF for consideration in May) with Sender Policy Framework (SPF). SPF, also known as Sender Policy Framework, was authored by Meng Weng Wong, the cofounder and chief technology officer at Pobox.com, a provider of subscription-based e-mail forwarding and mailing list services. Meng submitted SPF to the IETF in February.

Sender ID maintains lists of IP (Internet Protocol) addresses from which sent e-mail can be traced, and if adopted as a standard, could provide a way to close loopholes that allow e-mail senders to spoof or fake the origin of their message. The unified specification, which was the result of discussions between Microsoft and Meng that lasted from January to May, is aimed at simplifying industry adoption of effective e-mail authentication technology, Microsoft said in a statement Wednesday.

The IETF is also considering another mail authentication submission from Yahoo Inc., called DomainKeys. DomainKeys works differently from Sender ID by using encryption to generate a signature based on the e-mail message text that is placed in the message header.

IETF is a large open international community of network designers, operators, vendors and researchers whose work is carried out in working groups that operate mainly through mailing lists. The IETF holds three meetings a year, with the next one scheduled to take place Aug. 1 to Aug. 6 in San Diego.

The push for an e-mail authentication standard has recently been gaining more attention. On Tuesday, the Anti-Spam Technical Alliance's (ASTA), whose members include such high profile e-mail providers as Yahoo, Microsoft, America Online Inc. and EarthLink Inc., released its recommendations for stemming the tide of spam, or unsolicited commercial e-mail.

IDG News Service

I like it!
Post a comment
The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
Free books

Build your tech library with our book giveaways.

Windows PowerShell 2.0 Unleashed
By Tyson Kopczynski, Pete Handley, Marco Shaw; Published by Sams

Windows PowerShell Unleashed will not only give you deep mastery over PowerShell but also a greater understanding of the features being introduced in PowerShell 2.0–and show you how to use it to solve your challenges in your production environment. Enter now!

 

Ubuntu Server Administration
By Michael Jang; Published by McGraw-Hill Osborne Media

Realize a dynamic, stable, and secure Ubuntu Server environment with expert guidance, tips, and techniques from a Linux professional. Ubuntu Server Administration covers every facet of system management -- from users and file systems to performance tuning and troubleshooting. Enter now!

Featured Sponsor

AISO founders envisioned a Web hosting company that was environmentally friendly. While the company employed energy-efficient innovations like solar panels, its infrastructure produced unacceptable power and cooling requirements. Find out how AISO leveraged AMD technology to overcome their challenge in this case study white paper.

In this whitepaper, Scalar explores the opportunity to change the landscape with respect to mission critical databases built around Oracle. Leveraging technologies such as Linux, high-end commodity processing power and Oracle RAC technology to architect, design, build and maintain database infrastructure that delivers maximum availability, reliability and performance at a fraction of traditional cost.

On a typical day, weather.com, the Web site for The Weather Channel in Atlanta, serves up between 15 million and 20 million page views. But in September 2004, when back-to-back hurricanes ransacked Florida, the peak traffic on one day more than tripled: over 70 million page views by more than 7 million unique visitors. Read the full success story now.

More Resources