Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC) Failure Reporting

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Copyright Notice

Copyright (c) 2025 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved.¶

This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (https://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document. Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must include Revised BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as described in the Revised BSD License.¶

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

RFC EDITOR: PLEASE REMOVE THE FOLLOWING PARAGRAPH BEFORE PUBLISHING: The source for this draft is maintained in GitHub at: https://github.com/ietf-wg-dmarc/draft-ietf-dmarc-failure-reporting¶

Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC) [I-D.ietf-dmarc-dmarcbis] is a scalable mechanism by which a mail-originating organization can express domain-level policies and preferences for message validation, disposition, and reporting, that a mail-receiving organization can use to improve mail handling. This document focuses on one type of reporting that can be requested under DMARC.¶

Failure reports provide detailed information about the failure of a single message, or a group of similar messages failing for the same reason. They are meant to aid in cases where a Domain Owner is unable to detect why failures that were reported in aggregate form occurred. It is important to note that these reports can contain the header fields or sometimes the entire content of a failed message, which may contain personally identifiable information (PII). The potential disclosure of PII should be considered when deciding whether to request failure reports as a Domain Owner, or what information to include or redact in failure reports when creating them as a Mail Receiver, or whether to create failure reports at all.¶

2. DMARC Failure Reports

Besides the header fields or the entire contents of a failed message, failure reports supply details about transmission and DMARC authentication, which may aid the Domain Owner in determining the cause of an authentication failure.¶

Failure reports are normally generated and sent almost immediately after the Mail Receiver detects a DMARC failure. Rather than waiting for an aggregate report, these reports are useful for quickly notifying the Domain Owners when there is an authentication failure. Whether the failure is due to an infrastructure problem or the message is inauthentic, failure reports also provide more information about the failed message than is available in an aggregate report.¶

These reports should include as much of the message header fields and body as possible, consistent with the reporting party's privacy policies, to enable the Domain Owner to diagnose the authentication failure.¶

When a Domain Owner requests failure reports for the purpose of forensic analysis, and the Mail Receiver is willing to provide such reports, the Mail Receiver generates and sends a message using the format described in [RFC6591]; this document updates that reporting format, as described in Section 4.¶

The destination(s) that failure reports are sent to, and options for when they will be sent, are defined by the "ruf" and "fo" tags as defined in Section 4.7 of [I-D.ietf-dmarc-dmarcbis].¶

When multiple URIs are provided to receive failure reports, the report generator MUST make an attempt to deliver to each of them. External destinations MUST be verified, see Section 5. Report generators MUST NOT consider "ruf" tags in DMARC Policy Records having a "psd=y" tag, unless there are specific agreements between the interested parties.¶

Failure reports represent a possible denial-of-service attack that could be perpetrated by an attacker who sends numerous messages purporting to be from the intended victim Domain Owner but which fail both SPF and DKIM; this would cause participating Mail Receivers to send failure reports to the Domain Owner or its delegate(s), potentially in large numbers. Accordingly, participating Mail Receivers are encouraged to aggregate these reports as much as is practical, using the Incidents field of the Abuse Reporting Format [RFC5965]. Indeed, the aim is not to count each and every failure, but rather to report different failure conditions. Various pruning techniques are possible, including the following:¶

• store reports for a period of time before sending them, allowing detection, collection, and consolidation of like incidents;¶

• apply rate limiting, such as a maximum number of reports per minute that will be generated (and the remainder discarded)¶

3. Other Failure Reports

This document only describes DMARC failure reports. DKIM failure reports [RFC6651] and SPF failure reports [RFC6652] are described in separate documents. A Mail Receiver generating a DMARC failure report may or may not also issue a failure report specific to the failed authentication mechanism, according to its policy.¶

4. Reporting Format Update

Operators implementing this specification also implement an augmented version of [RFC6591] as follows:¶

1. A DMARC failure report includes the following ARF header fields, with the indicated normative requirement levels:¶

   • Identity-Alignment (REQUIRED; defined below)¶

   • Delivery-Result (OPTIONAL)¶

   • DKIM-Domain, DKIM-Identity, DKIM-Selector (REQUIRED for DKIM failures of an aligned identifier)¶

   • DKIM-Canonicalized-Header, DKIM-Canonicalized-Body (OPTIONAL if reporting a DKIM failure)¶

   • SPF-DNS (REQUIRED for SPF failure of an aligned identifier)¶

2. The "Identity-Alignment" field is defined to contain a comma- separated list of authentication mechanism names that failed to authenticate an aligned identity, or the keyword "none" if none did. ABNF ([RFC5234]):¶

id-align     = "Identity-Alignment:" [CFWS]
                 ( "none" /
                   dmarc-method *( [CFWS] "," [CFWS] dmarc-method ) )
                 [CFWS]

dmarc-method = ( "dkim" / "spf" )
                 ; each may appear at most once in an id-align

3. Authentication Failure Type "dmarc" is defined, which is to be used when a failure report is generated because some or all of the authentication mechanisms failed to produce aligned identifiers. Note that a failure report generator MAY also independently produce an ARF message for any or all of the underlying authentication methods.¶

5. Verifying External Destinations

It is possible to specify destinations for failure reports that are outside of the Organizational Domain of the DMARC Policy Record that was requesting the reports. These destinations are commonly referred to as "external destinations" and may represent a different domain controlled by the same organization, a contracted report processing service, or some other arrangement.¶

Without this check, a bad actor could publish a DMARC Policy Record that requests that failure reports be sent to an external destination, then deliberately send messages that will generate failure reports as a form of abuse. Or, a Domain Owner could incorrectly publish a DMARC Policy Record with an external destination for failure reports, forcing the external destination to deal with unwanted messages and potential privacy issues.¶

Therefore, in case of external destinations, a Mail Receiver who generates failure reports MUST use the Verifying External Destinations procedure described in Section 4 of [I-D.ietf-dmarc-aggregate-reporting], substituting the "ruf" tag where the "rua" tag appears in that procedure.`¶

6. IANA Considerations

7. Privacy Considerations

This section discusses issues specific to private data that may be included in the DMARC reporting functions.¶

8. Security Considerations

While reviewing this document and its Security Considerations, the reader should also review the Privacy Considerations above, as well as the Privacy Considerations and Security Considerations in sections 10 and 11 of [I-D.ietf-dmarc-dmarcbis]; and in sections 7 and 8 of [I-D.ietf-dmarc-aggregate-reporting].¶

In addition, note that Organizational Domains are only an approximation to actual domain ownership. Therefore, reports may be sent to someone unrelated to the actual sender or Domain Owner. That makes considerations in Section 7.1 all the more relevant.¶

Appendix A. Example Failure Report

This is the full content of a failure message, including the message header.¶

Received: from gen.example (gen.example [192.0.2.1])
  (TLS: TLS1.3,256bits,ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384)
  by mail.consumer.example with ESMTPS
  id 00000000005DC0DD.0000442E; Tue, 19 Jul 2022 07:57:50 +0200
DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/simple;
  d=gen.example; s=mail; t=1658210268;
  bh=rCrh1aFDE8d/Fltt8wbcu48bLOu4OM23QXqphUZPAIM=;
  h=From:To:Date:Subject:From;
  b=IND9JkuwF9/5841kzxMbPeej0VYimVzNKozR2R89M8eYO2zOlCBblx507Gz0YK7mE
   /h6pslWm0ODBVFzLlwY9CXv4Vu62QsN0RBIXHPjEXOkoM2VCD5zCd+5i5dtCFX7Mxh
   LThb2ZJ3efklbSB9RQRwxcmRvCPV7z6lt/Ds9sucVE1RDODYHjx+iWnAUQrlos6ZQb
   u/YOUGjf60LPpyljfPu3EpFwo80mSHyQlP/4S5KEykgPQMgCqLPPKvJwu1aAIDj+jG
   q2ylO3fmc/ERDeDWACtR67YNabEKBWtjqCRLNxKttazViJTZ5drcLfpX0853KoougX
   Rltp7zdoLdy4A==
From: DMARC Filter <DMARC@gen.example>;
To: dmarcfail@consumer.example
Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2022 00:57:48 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: FW: This is the original subject
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/report; report-type=feedback-report;
  boundary="=_mime_boundary_"
Message-Id: <20220719055748.4AE9D403CC@gen.example>;

This is a MIME-formatted message.  If you see this text it means that
your E-mail software does not support MIME-formatted messages.

--=_mime_boundary_
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
Content-Disposition: inline
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

This is an authentication failure report for an email message
received from IP 192.0.2.2 on Tue, 19 Jul 2022 00:57:48 -0500.

--=_mime_boundary_
Content-Type: message/feedback-report
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Feedback-Type: auth-failure
Version: 1
User-Agent: DMARC-Filter/1.2.3
Auth-Failure: dmarc
Authentication-Results: gen.example;
  dmarc=fail header.from=consumer.example
Identity-Alignment: dkim
DKIM-Domain: consumer.example
DKIM-Identity: @consumer.example
DKIM-Selector: epsilon
Original-Envelope-Id: 65E1A3F0A0
Original-Mail-From: author=gen.example@forwarder.example
Source-IP: 192.0.2.2
Source-Port: 12345
Reported-Domain: consumer.example

--=_mime_boundary_
Content-Type: message/rfc822; charset=utf-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Authentication-Results: gen.example;
  dkim=permerror header.d=forwarder.example header.b="EjCbN/c3";
  dkim=temperror header.d=forwarder.example header.b="mQ8GEWPc";
  dkim=permerror header.d=consumer.example header.b="hETrymCb";
  dkim=neutral header.d=consumer.example header.b="C2nsAp3A";
Received: from mail.forwarder.example
  (mail.forwarder.example [IPv6:2001:db8::23ac])
  by mail.gen.example (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5E8B0C159826
  for <x@gen.example>; Sun, 14 Aug 2022 07:58:29 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from mail.forwarder.example (localhost [127.0.0.1])
  by mail.forwarder.example (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4Ln7Qw4fnvz6Bq
  for <x@gen.example>; Tue, 19 Jul 2022 07:57:44 +0200
DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=ed25519-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed;
  d=forwarder.example; s=ed25519-59hs; t=1658210264;
  x=1663210264; bh=KYH/g7ForvDbnyyDLYSjauMYMW6sEIqu75/9w3OIONg=;
  h=Message-ID:Date:List-Id:List-Archive:List-Post:List-Help:
   List-Subscribe:List-Unsubscribe:List-Owner:MIME-Version:Subject:
   To:References:From:In-Reply-To:Content-Type:
   Content-Transfer-Encoding:autocrypt:cc:content-transfer-encoding:
   content-type:date:from:in-reply-to:message-id:mime-version:
   openpgp:references:subject:to;
  b=EjCbN/c3bTU4QkZH/zwTbYxBDp0k8kpmWSXh5h1M7T8J4vtRo+hvafJazT3ZRgq+7
   +4dzEQwUhl+NOJYXXNUAA==
DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed;
  d=forwarder.example; s=rsa-wgJg; t=1658210264; x=1663210264;
  bh=KYH/g7ForvDbnyyDLYSjauMYMW6sEIqu75/9w3OIONg=;
  h=Message-ID:Date:List-Id:List-Archive:List-Post:List-Help:
   List-Subscribe:List-Unsubscribe:List-Owner:MIME-Version:Subject:
   To:References:From:In-Reply-To:Content-Type:
   Content-Transfer-Encoding:autocrypt:cc:content-transfer-encoding:
   content-type:date:from:in-reply-to:message-id:mime-version:
   openpgp:references:subject:to;
  b=mQ8GEWPcVpBpeqQ88pcbXpGHBT0J/Rwi8Zd2WZTXWWneQGRCOJLRcbBJpjqnrwtqd
   76IqawH86tihz4Z/12J1GBCdNx1gfazsoI3yaqfooRDYg0mSyZHrYhQBmodnPcqZj4
   /25L5278sc/UNrYO9az2n7R/skbVZ0bvSo2eEiGU8fcpO8+a5SKNYskhaviAI4eGIB
   iRMdEP7gP8dESdnZguNbY5HI32UMDpPPNqajzd/BgcqbveYpRrWCDOhcY47POV7GHM
   i/KLHiZXtJsL3/Pr/4TL+HTjdX8EDSsy1K5/JCvJCFsJHnSvkEaJQGLn/2m03eW9r8
   9w1bQ90aY+VCQ==
X-Original-To: users@forwarder.example
Received: from mail.consumer.example
  (mail.consumer.example [192.0.2.4])
  (using TLSv1.3 with cipher TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 (256/256 bits)
   key-exchange ECDHE (P-256) server-signature ECDSA (P-384)
   server-digest SHA384)
  (Client did not present a certificate)
  by mail.forwarder.example (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 4Ln7Qs55xmz4nP
  for <users@forwarder.example>;
  Tue, 19 Jul 2022 07:57:41 +0200 (CEST)
Authentication-Results: mail.forwarder.example;
  arc=none smtp.remote-ip=192.0.2.4
Authentication-Results: mail.forwarder.example;
  dkim=pass (512-bit key; secure) header.d=consumer.example
   header.i=@consumer.example header.a=ed25519-sha256
   header.s=epsilon header.b=hETrymCb;
  dkim=pass (1152-bit key; secure) header.d=consumer.example
   header.i=@consumer.example header.a=rsa-sha256
   header.s=delta header.b=C2nsAp3A
DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=ed25519-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed;
  d=consumer.example; s=epsilon; t=1658210255;
  bh=KYH/g7ForvDbnyyDLYSjauMYMW6sEIqu75/9w3OIONg=;
  h=Date:Subject:To:References:From:In-Reply-To;
  b=hETrymCbz6T1Dyo5dCG9dk8rPykKLdhJCPFeJ9TiiP/kaoN2afpUYtj+SrI+I83lp
   p1F/FfYSGy7zz3Q3OdxBA==
DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed;
  d=consumer.example; s=delta; t=1658210255;
  bh=KYH/g7ForvDbnyyDLYSjauMYMW6sEIqu75/9w3OIONg=;
  h=Date:To:References:From:In-Reply-To;
  b=C2nsAp3AMNX33Nq7nN/StPo921xE3XGF8Ju3iAKdYB3EKhsril0N5IjWGlglJECst
   jLNKSo7KWZZ2lkH/dVZ9Rs1GHT2uaKy1sc/xmNIC5rHdhrxammiwpTSo4PsT8disfc
   3DVF6Q62n0EsdLFqcw1KY8A9inFqYKY2tqoo+y4zMtItqCYx3xjsj3I0IFLuX
Author: Message Author <author@consumer.example>
Received: from [192.0.2.8] (host-8-2-0-192.isp.example [192.0.2.8])
  (AUTH: CRAM-MD5 uXDGrn@SYT0/k, TLS: TLS1.3,128bits,
  ECDHE_RSA_AES_128_GCM_SHA256)
  by mail.consumer.example with ESMTPSA
  id 00000000005DC076.00004417; Tue, 19 Jul 2022 07:57:35 +0200
Message-ID: <2431dc66-b010-c9cc-4f2b-a1f889f8bdb4@consumer.example>
Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2022 07:57:33 +0200
List-Id: <users.forwarder.example>
List-Post: <mailto:users@forwarder.example>
List-Help: <mailto:users+help@forwarder.example>
List-Subscribe: <mailto:users+subscribe@forwarder.example>
List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:users+unsubscribe@forwarder.example>
List-Owner: <mailto:users+owner@forwarder.example>
Precedence: list
MIME-Version: 1.0
Subject: This is the original subject
Content-Language: en-US
To: users@forwarder.example
Authentication-Results: consumer.example; auth=pass (details omitted)
From: Message Author <author@consumer.example>
In-Reply-To: <20220718102753.0f6d9dde.cel@example.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

[ Message body was here ]
--=_mime_boundary_--

The Source-Port field definition is given by [RFC6692]¶

If the body of the message is not included, the last MIME entity would have "Content-Type: text/rfc822-headers" instead of message/rfc822.¶

Appendix B. Change Log {change-log}

[RFC Editor: Please remove this section prior to publication.]¶

Authors' Addresses