you can configure a domain only to accept dmarc/tls reports. those domains
won't have addresses for that domain configured (the reporting destination
address is for another domain). we already handled such domains specially in a
few places. but we were considering ourselves authoritative for such domains if
an smtp client would send a message to the domain during submit. and we would
reject all recipient addresses. but we should be trying to deliver those
messages to the actual mx hosts for the domain, which we will now do.
most content is in markdown files in website/, some is taken out of the repo
README and rfc/index.txt. a Go file generates html. static files are kept in a
separate repo due to size.
the http basic auth we had was very simple to reason about, and to implement.
but it has a major downside:
there is no way to logout, browsers keep sending credentials. ideally, browsers
themselves would show a button to stop sending credentials.
a related downside: the http auth mechanism doesn't indicate for which server
paths the credentials are.
another downside: the original password is sent to the server with each
request. though sending original passwords to web servers seems to be
considered normal.
our new approach uses session cookies, along with csrf values when we can. the
sessions are server-side managed, automatically extended on each use. this
makes it easy to invalidate sessions and keeps the frontend simpler (than with
long- vs short-term sessions and refreshing). the cookies are httponly,
samesite=strict, scoped to the path of the web interface. cookies are set
"secure" when set over https. the cookie is set by a successful call to Login.
a call to Logout invalidates a session. changing a password invalidates all
sessions for a user, but keeps the session with which the password was changed
alive. the csrf value is also random, and associated with the session cookie.
the csrf must be sent as header for api calls, or as parameter for direct form
posts (where we cannot set a custom header). rest-like calls made directly by
the browser, e.g. for images, don't have a csrf protection. the csrf value is
returned by the Login api call and stored in localstorage.
api calls without credentials return code "user:noAuth", and with bad
credentials return "user:badAuth". the api client recognizes this and triggers
a login. after a login, all auth-failed api calls are automatically retried.
only for "user:badAuth" is an error message displayed in the login form (e.g.
session expired).
in an ideal world, browsers would take care of most session management. a
server would indicate authentication is needed (like http basic auth), and the
browsers uses trusted ui to request credentials for the server & path. the
browser could use safer mechanism than sending original passwords to the
server, such as scram, along with a standard way to create sessions. for now,
web developers have to do authentication themselves: from showing the login
prompt, ensuring the right session/csrf cookies/localstorage/headers/etc are
sent with each request.
webauthn is a newer way to do authentication, perhaps we'll implement it in the
future. though hardware tokens aren't an attractive option for many users, and
it may be overkill as long as we still do old-fashioned authentication in smtp
& imap where passwords can be sent to the server.
for issue #58
all ui frontend code is now in typescript. we no longer need jshint, and we
build the frontend code during "make build".
this also changes tlsrpt types for a Report, not encoding field names with
dashes, but to keep them valid identifiers in javascript. this makes it more
conveniently to work with in the frontend, and works around a sherpats
limitation.
the autoconfig/autodiscover endpoints, and the printed client settings (in
quickstart, in the admin interface) now all point to the cname record (called
"client settings domain"). it is configurable per domain, and set to
"mail.<domain>" by default. for existing mox installs, the domain can be added
by editing the config file.
this makes it easier for a domain to migrate to another server in the future.
client settings don't have to be updated, the cname can just be changed.
before, the hostname of the mail server was configured in email clients.
migrating away would require changing settings in all clients.
if a client settings domain is configured, a TLS certificate for the name will
be requested through ACME, or must be configured manually.
to get the security benefits (detecting mitm attempts), explicitly configure
clients to use a scram plus variant, e.g. scram-sha-256-plus. unfortunately,
not many clients support it yet.
imapserver scram plus support seems to work with the latest imtest (imap test
client) from cyrus-sasl. no success yet with mutt (with gsasl) though.
should prevent potential mitm attacks. especially when done close to the
machine itself (where a http/tls challenge is intercepted to get a valid
certificate), as seen on the internet last month.
so a single user cannot fill up the disk.
by default, there is (still) no limit. a default can be set in the config file
for all accounts, and a per-account max size can be set that would override any
global setting.
this does not take into account disk usage of the index database. and also not
of any file system overhead.
based on discussion on uta mailing list. it seems the intention of the tlsrpt
is to only send reports to recipient domains. but i was able to interpret the
tlsrpt rfc as sending reports to mx hosts too ("policy domain", and because it
makes sense given how DANE works per MX host, not recipient domain). this
change makes the behaviour of outgoing reports to recipient domains work more
in line with expectations most folks may have about tls reporting (i.e. also
include per-mx host tlsa policies in the report). this also keeps reports to mx
hosts working, and makes them more useful by including the recipient domains of
affected deliveries.
we were already accepting, processing and displaying incoming tls reports. now
we start tracking TLS connection and security-policy-related errors for
outgoing message deliveries as well. we send reports once a day, to the
reporting addresses specified in TLSRPT records (rua) of a policy domain. these
reports are about MTA-STS policies and/or DANE policies, and about
STARTTLS-related failures.
sending reports is enabled by default, but can be disabled through setting
NoOutgoingTLSReports in mox.conf.
only at the end of the implementation process came the realization that the
TLSRPT policy domain for DANE (MX) hosts are separate from the TLSRPT policy
for the recipient domain, and that MTA-STS and DANE TLS/policy results are
typically delivered in separate reports. so MX hosts need their own TLSRPT
policies.
config for the per-host TLSRPT policy should be added to mox.conf for existing
installs, in field HostTLSRPT. it is automatically configured by quickstart for
new installs. with a HostTLSRPT config, the "dns records" and "dns check" admin
pages now suggest the per-host TLSRPT record. by creating that record, you're
requesting TLS reports about your MX host.
gathering all the TLS/policy results is somewhat tricky. the tentacles go
throughout the code. the positive result is that the TLS/policy-related code
had to be cleaned up a bit. for example, the smtpclient TLS modes now reflect
reality better, with independent settings about whether PKIX and/or DANE
verification has to be done, and/or whether verification errors have to be
ignored (e.g. for tls-required: no header). also, cached mtasts policies of
mode "none" are now cleaned up once the MTA-STS DNS record goes away.
in smtpserver, we store dmarc evaluations (under the right conditions).
in dmarcdb, we periodically (hourly) send dmarc reports if there are
evaluations. for failed deliveries, we deliver the dsn quietly to a submailbox
of the postmaster mailbox.
this is on by default, but can be disabled in mox.conf.
with requiretls, the tls verification mode/rules for email deliveries can be
changed by the sender/submitter. in two ways:
1. "requiretls" smtp extension to always enforce verified tls (with mta-sts or
dnssec+dane), along the entire delivery path until delivery into the final
destination mailbox (so entire transport is verified-tls-protected).
2. "tls-required: no" message header, to ignore any tls and tls verification
errors even if the recipient domain has a policy that requires tls verification
(mta-sts and/or dnssec+dane), allowing delivery of non-sensitive messages in
case of misconfiguration/interoperability issues (at least useful for sending
tls reports).
we enable requiretls by default (only when tls is active), for smtp and
submission. it can be disabled through the config.
for each delivery attempt, we now store (per recipient domain, in the account
of the sender) whether the smtp server supports starttls and requiretls. this
support is shown (after having sent a first message) in the webmail when
sending a message (the previous 3 bars under the address input field are now 5
bars, the first for starttls support, the last for requiretls support). when
all recipient domains for a message are known to implement requiretls,
requiretls is automatically selected for sending (instead of "default" tls
behaviour). users can also select the "fallback to insecure" to add the
"tls-required: no" header.
new metrics are added for insight into requiretls errors and (some, not yet
all) cases where tls-required-no ignored a tls/verification error.
the admin can change the requiretls status for messages in the queue. so with
default delivery attempts, when verified tls is required by failing, an admin
could potentially change the field to "tls-required: no"-behaviour.
messages received (over smtp) with the requiretls option, get a comment added
to their Received header line, just before "id", after "with".
the vendored dns resolver code is a copy of the go stdlib dns resolver, with
awareness of the "authentic data" (i.e. dnssec secure) added, as well as support
for enhanced dns errors, and looking up tlsa records (for dane). ideally it
would be upstreamed, but the chances seem slim.
dnssec-awareness is added to all packages, e.g. spf, dkim, dmarc, iprev. their
dnssec status is added to the Received message headers for incoming email.
but the main reason to add dnssec was for implementing dane. with dane, the
verification of tls certificates can be done through certificates/public keys
published in dns (in the tlsa records). this only makes sense (is trustworthy)
if those dns records can be verified to be authentic.
mox now applies dane to delivering messages over smtp. mox already implemented
mta-sts for webpki/pkix-verification of certificates against the (large) pool
of CA's, and still enforces those policies when present. but it now also checks
for dane records, and will verify those if present. if dane and mta-sts are
both absent, the regular opportunistic tls with starttls is still done. and the
fallback to plaintext is also still done.
mox also makes it easy to setup dane for incoming deliveries, so other servers
can deliver with dane tls certificate verification. the quickstart now
generates private keys that are used when requesting certificates with acme.
the private keys are pre-generated because they must be static and known during
setup, because their public keys must be published in tlsa records in dns.
autocert would generate private keys on its own, so had to be forked to add the
option to provide the private key when requesting a new certificate. hopefully
upstream will accept the change and we can drop the fork.
with this change, using the quickstart to setup a new mox instance, the checks
at internet.nl result in a 100% score, provided the domain is dnssec-signed and
the network doesn't have any issues.
to accept reports for another domain, first add that domain to the config,
leaving all options empty except DMARC/TLSRPT in which you configure a Domain.
the suggested DNS DMARC/TLSRPT records will show the email address with
configured domain. for DMARC, the dnscheck functionality will verify that the
destination domain has opted in to receiving reports.
there is a new command-line subcommand "mox dmarc checkreportaddrs" that
verifies if dmarc reporting destination addresses have opted in to received
reports.
this also changes the suggested dns records (in quickstart, and through admin
pages and cli subcommand) to take into account whether DMARC and TLSRPT is
configured, and with which localpart/domain (previously it always printed
records as if reporting was enabled for the domain). and when generating the
suggested DNS records, the dmarc.Record and tlsrpt.Record code is used, with
proper uri-escaping.
we only compress if applicable (content-type indicates likely compressible),
client supports it, response doesn't already have a content-encoding).
for internal handlers, we always enable compression. for reverse proxied and
static files, compression must be enabled per handler.
for internal & reverse proxy handlers, we do streaming compression at
"bestspeed" quality (probably level 1).
for static files, we have a cache based on mtime with fixed max size, where we
evict based on least recently used. we compress with the default level (more
cpu, better ratio).
NATIPs lists the public IPs, so we can still do the DNS checks on them. with
IPsNATed, we disabled the checks.
based on feedback by kikoreis in issue #52
this is based on @bobobo1618's PR #50. bobobo1618 had the right idea, i tried
including an "is forwarded email" configuration option but that indeed became
too tightly coupled. the "is forwarded" option is still planned, but it is
separate from the "accept rejects to mailbox" config option, because one could
still want to push back on forwarded spam messages.
we do an actual accept, delivering to a configured mailbox, instead of storing
to the rejects mailbox where messages can automatically be removed from. one
of the goals of mox is not pretend to accept email while actually junking it.
users can still configure delivery to a junk folder (as was already possible),
but aren't deleted automatically. there is still an X-Mox-Reason header in the
message, and a log line about accepting the reject, but otherwise it is
registered and treated as an (smtp) accept.
the ruleset mailbox is still required to keep that explicit. users can specify
Inbox again.
hope this is good enough for PR #50, otherwise we'll change it.
a few places still looked at the name "Sent". but since we have special-use
flags, we should always look at those. this also changes the config so admins
can specify different names for the special-use mailboxes to create for new
accounts, e.g. in a different language. the old config option is still
understood, just deprecated.
it was far down on the roadmap, but implemented earlier, because it's
interesting, and to help prepare for a jmap implementation. for jmap we need to
implement more client-like functionality than with just imap. internal data
structures need to change. jmap has lots of other requirements, so it's already
a big project. by implementing a webmail now, some of the required data
structure changes become clear and can be made now, so the later jmap
implementation can do things similarly to the webmail code. the webmail
frontend and webmail are written together, making their interface/api much
smaller and simpler than jmap.
one of the internal changes is that we now keep track of per-mailbox
total/unread/unseen/deleted message counts and mailbox sizes. keeping this
data consistent after any change to the stored messages (through the code base)
is tricky, so mox now has a consistency check that verifies the counts are
correct, which runs only during tests, each time an internal account reference
is closed. we have a few more internal "changes" that are propagated for the
webmail frontend (that imap doesn't have a way to propagate on a connection),
like changes to the special-use flags on mailboxes, and used keywords in a
mailbox. more changes that will be required have revealed themselves while
implementing the webmail, and will be implemented next.
the webmail user interface is modeled after the mail clients i use or have
used: thunderbird, macos mail, mutt; and webmails i normally only use for
testing: gmail, proton, yahoo, outlook. a somewhat technical user is assumed,
but still the goal is to make this webmail client easy to use for everyone. the
user interface looks like most other mail clients: a list of mailboxes, a
search bar, a message list view, and message details. there is a top/bottom and
a left/right layout for the list/message view, default is automatic based on
screen size. the panes can be resized by the user. buttons for actions are just
text, not icons. clicking a button briefly shows the shortcut for the action in
the bottom right, helping with learning to operate quickly. any text that is
underdotted has a title attribute that causes more information to be displayed,
e.g. what a button does or a field is about. to highlight potential phishing
attempts, any text (anywhere in the webclient) that switches unicode "blocks"
(a rough approximation to (language) scripts) within a word is underlined
orange. multiple messages can be selected with familiar ui interaction:
clicking while holding control and/or shift keys. keyboard navigation works
with arrows/page up/down and home/end keys, and also with a few basic vi-like
keys for list/message navigation. we prefer showing the text instead of
html (with inlined images only) version of a message. html messages are shown
in an iframe served from an endpoint with CSP headers to prevent dangerous
resources (scripts, external images) from being loaded. the html is also
sanitized, with javascript removed. a user can choose to load external
resources (e.g. images for tracking purposes).
the frontend is just (strict) typescript, no external frameworks. all
incoming/outgoing data is typechecked, both the api request parameters and
response types, and the data coming in over SSE. the types and checking code
are generated with sherpats, which uses the api definitions generated by
sherpadoc based on the Go code. so types from the backend are automatically
propagated to the frontend. since there is no framework to automatically
propagate properties and rerender components, changes coming in over the SSE
connection are propagated explicitly with regular function calls. the ui is
separated into "views", each with a "root" dom element that is added to the
visible document. these views have additional functions for getting changes
propagated, often resulting in the view updating its (internal) ui state (dom).
we keep the frontend compilation simple, it's just a few typescript files that
get compiled (combined and types stripped) into a single js file, no additional
runtime code needed or complicated build processes used. the webmail is served
is served from a compressed, cachable html file that includes style and the
javascript, currently just over 225kb uncompressed, under 60kb compressed (not
minified, including comments). we include the generated js files in the
repository, to keep Go's easily buildable self-contained binaries.
authentication is basic http, as with the account and admin pages. most data
comes in over one long-term SSE connection to the backend. api requests signal
which mailbox/search/messages are requested over the SSE connection. fetching
individual messages, and making changes, are done through api calls. the
operations are similar to imap, so some code has been moved from package
imapserver to package store. the future jmap implementation will benefit from
these changes too. more functionality will probably be moved to the store
package in the future.
the quickstart enables webmail on the internal listener by default (for new
installs). users can enable it on the public listener if they want to. mox
localserve enables it too. to enable webmail on existing installs, add settings
like the following to the listeners in mox.conf, similar to AccountHTTP(S):
WebmailHTTP:
Enabled: true
WebmailHTTPS:
Enabled: true
special thanks to liesbeth, gerben, andrii for early user feedback.
there is plenty still to do, see the list at the top of webmail/webmail.ts.
feedback welcome as always.
we could make more types of delays configurable. the current approach isn't
great, as it results in an a default value of "0s" in the config file, while
the actual default is 15s (which is documented just above, but still).
the default transport is still just "direct delivery", where we connect to the
destination domain's MX servers.
other transports are:
- regular smtp without authentication, this is relaying to a smarthost.
- submission with authentication, e.g. to a third party email sending service.
- direct delivery, but with with connections going through a socks proxy. this
can be helpful if your ip is blocked, you need to get email out, and you have
another IP that isn't blocked.
keep in mind that for all of the above, appropriate SPF/DKIM settings have to
be configured. the "dnscheck" for a domain does a check for any SOCKS IP in the
SPF record. SPF for smtp/submission (ranges? includes?) and any DKIM
requirements cannot really be checked.
which transport is used can be configured through routes. routes can be set on
an account, a domain, or globally. the routes are evaluated in that order, with
the first match selecting the transport. these routes are evaluated for each
delivery attempt. common selection criteria are recipient domain and sender
domain, but also which delivery attempt this is. you could configured mox to
attempt sending through a 3rd party from the 4th attempt onwards.
routes and transports are optional. if no route matches, or an empty/zero
transport is selected, normal direct delivery is done.
we could already "submit" emails with 3rd party accounts with "sendmail". but
we now support more SASL authentication mechanisms with SMTP (not only PLAIN,
but also SCRAM-SHA-256, SCRAM-SHA-1 and CRAM-MD5), which sendmail now also
supports. sendmail will use the most secure mechanism supported by the server,
or the explicitly configured mechanism.
for issue #36 by dmikushin. also based on earlier discussion on hackernews.
makes it easier to use tls keys/certs managed by other tools, with or without
acme. the root process has access to open such files. the child process reads
the key from the file descriptor, then closes the file.
for issue #30 by inigoserna, thanks!
if we recognize that a request for a WebForward is trying to turn the
connection into a websocket, we forward it to the backend and check if the
backend understands the websocket request. if so, we pass back the upgrade
response and get out of the way, copying bytes between the two. we do log the
total amount of bytes read from the client and written to the client. if the
backend doesn't respond with a websocke response, or an invalid one, we respond
with a regular non-websocket response. and we log details about the failed
connection, should help with debugging and any bug reports.
we don't try to parse the websocket framing, that's between the client and the
backend. we could try to parse it, in part to protect the backend from bad
frames, but it would be a lot of work and could be brittle in the face of
extensions.
this doesn't yet handle websocket connections when a http proxy is configured.
we'll implement it when someone needs it. we do recognize it and fail the
connection.
for issue #25
by specifying a "destination" in an account that is just "@" followed by the
domain, e.g. "@example.org". messages are only delivered to the catchall
address when no regular destination matches (taking the per-domain
catchall-separator and case-sensisitivity into account).
for issue #18
by default 1000 messages per day, and to max 200 first-time receivers.
i don't think a person would reach those limits. a compromised account abused
by spammers could easily reach that limit. this prevents further damage.
the error message you will get is quite clear, pointing to the configuration
parameter that should be changed.
so you can use the host (domain) name of the mail server for serving other
resources too. the default is is still that account is served on /, and so
takes all incoming requests before giving webhandlers a chance.
mox localserve now serves the account pages on /account/
current behaviour isn't intuitive. it's not great to have to attempt parsing
the strings as both localpart and email address. so we deprecate the
localpart-only behaviour. when we load the config file, and it has
localpart-only Destinations keys, we'll change them to full addresses in
memory. when an admin causes a write of domains.conf, it'll automatically be
fixed. we log an error with a deprecated notice for each localpart-only
destinations key.
sometime in the future, we can remove the old localpart-only destination
support. will be in the release notes then.
also start keeping track of update notes that need to make it in the release
notes of the next release.
for issue #18
you can already get most http to https redirects through DontRedirectPlainHTTP
in WebHandler, but that needs handlers for all paths.
now you can just set up a redirect for a domain and all its path to baseurl
https://domain (leaving other webdirect fields empty). when the request comes
in with plain http, the redirect to https is done. that next request will also
evaluate the same redirect rule. but it will not cause a match because it would
redirect to the same scheme,host,path. so next webhandlers get a chance to
serve.
also clarify in webhandlers docs that also account & admin built-in handlers
run first.
related to issue #16
- if the guessed hostname is not correct, you can specify one yourself. useful
if you generate a config locally and deploy to a different machine.
- if explicit public ips are found, check them with spamhaus and spamcop DNSBLs
and warn if they are listed, with links to check more DNSBLs. should prevent
disappointment later on.
- make it easier to run with an existing webserver. the quickstart now has a new option for that, it generates a different mox.conf, and further instructions such as configuring the tls keys/certs and reverse proxy urls. and changes to make autoconfig work in that case too.
- when starting up, request a tls cert for the hostname and for the autoconfig endpoint. the first will be requested soon anyway, and the autoconfig cert is needed early so the first autoconfig request doesn't time out (without helpful message to the user by at least thunderbird). and don't request the certificate before the servers are online. the root process was now requesting the certs, before the child process was serving on the tls port.
- add examples of configs generated by the quickstart.
- enable debug logging in config from quickstart, to give user more info.
for issue #5
- make builtin http handlers serve on specific domains, such as for mta-sts, so
e.g. /.well-known/mta-sts.txt isn't served on all domains.
- add logging of a few more fields in access logging.
- small tweaks/bug fixes in webserver request handling.
- add config option for redirecting entire domains to another (common enough).
- split httpserver metric into two: one for duration until writing header (i.e.
performance of server), another for duration until full response is sent to
client (i.e. performance as perceived by users).
- add admin ui, a new page for managing the configs. after making changes
and hitting "save", the changes take effect immediately. the page itself
doesn't look very well-designed (many input fields, makes it look messy). i
have an idea to improve it (explained in admin.html as todo) by making the
layout look just like the config file. not urgent though.
i've already changed my websites/webapps over.
the idea of adding a webserver is to take away a (the) reason for folks to want
to complicate their mox setup by running an other webserver on the same machine.
i think the current webserver implementation can already serve most common use
cases. with a few more tweaks (feedback needed!) we should be able to get to 95%
of the use cases. the reverse proxy can take care of the remaining 5%.
nevertheless, a next step is still to change the quickstart to make it easier
for folks to run with an existing webserver, with existing tls certs/keys.
that's how this relates to issue #5.
