if the message has a list-id header, we assume this is a (mailing) list
message, and we require a dkim/spf-verified domain (we prefer the shortest that
is a suffix of the list-id value). the rule we would add will mark such
messages as from a mailing list, changing filtering rules on incoming messages
(not enforcing dmarc policies). messages will be matched on list-id header and
will only match if they have the same dkim/spf-verified domain.
if the message doesn't have a list-id header, we'll ask to match based on
"message from" address.
we don't ask the user in several cases:
- if the destination/source mailbox is a special-use mailbox (e.g.
trash,archive,sent,junk; inbox isn't included)
- if the rule already exist (no point in adding it again).
- if the user said "no, not for this list-id/from-address" in the past.
- if the user said "no, not for messages moved to this mailbox" in the past.
we'll add the rule if the message was moved out of the inbox.
if the message was moved to the inbox, we check if there is a matching rule
that we can remove.
we now remember the "no" answers (for list-id, msg-from-addr and mailbox) in
the account database.
to implement the msgfrom rules, this adds support to rulesets for matching on
message "from" address. before, we could match on smtp from address (and other
fields). rulesets now also have a field for comments. webmail adds a note that
it created the rule, with the date.
manual editing of the rulesets is still in the webaccount page. this webmail
functionality is just a convenient way to add/remove common rules.
for dmarc reporting address, tls reporting address, mtasts policy, dkim keys/selectors.
should make it easier for webadmin-using admins to discover these settings.
the webadmin interface is now on par with functionality you would set through
the configuration file, let's keep it that way.
this simplifies some of the code that makes modifications to the config file. a
few protected functions can make changes to the dynamic config, which webadmin
can use. instead of having separate functions in mox-/admin.go for each type of
change.
this also exports the parsed full dynamic config to webadmin, so we need fewer
functions for specific config fields too.
for applications to compose/send messages, receive delivery feedback, and
maintain suppression lists.
this is an alternative to applications using a library to compose messages,
submitting those messages using smtp, and monitoring a mailbox with imap for
DSNs, which can be processed into the equivalent of suppression lists. but you
need to know about all these standards/protocols and find libraries. by using
the webapi & webhooks, you just need a http & json library.
unfortunately, there is no standard for these kinds of api, so mox has made up
yet another one...
matching incoming DSNs about deliveries to original outgoing messages requires
keeping history of "retired" messages (delivered from the queue, either
successfully or failed). this can be enabled per account. history is also
useful for debugging deliveries. we now also keep history of each delivery
attempt, accessible while still in the queue, and kept when a message is
retired. the queue webadmin pages now also have pagination, to show potentially
large history.
a queue of webhook calls is now managed too. failures are retried similar to
message deliveries. webhooks can also be saved to the retired list after
completing. also configurable per account.
messages can be sent with a "unique smtp mail from" address. this can only be
used if the domain is configured with a localpart catchall separator such as
"+". when enabled, a queued message gets assigned a random "fromid", which is
added after the separator when sending. when DSNs are returned, they can be
related to previously sent messages based on this fromid. in the future, we can
implement matching on the "envid" used in the smtp dsn extension, or on the
"message-id" of the message. using a fromid can be triggered by authenticating
with a login email address that is configured as enabling fromid.
suppression lists are automatically managed per account. if a delivery attempt
results in certain smtp errors, the destination address is added to the
suppression list. future messages queued for that recipient will immediately
fail without a delivery attempt. suppression lists protect your mail server
reputation.
submitted messages can carry "extra" data through the queue and webhooks for
outgoing deliveries. through webapi as a json object, through smtp submission
as message headers of the form "x-mox-extra-<key>: value".
to make it easy to test webapi/webhooks locally, the "localserve" mode actually
puts messages in the queue. when it's time to deliver, it still won't do a full
delivery attempt, but just delivers to the sender account. unless the recipient
address has a special form, simulating a failure to deliver.
admins now have more control over the queue. "hold rules" can be added to mark
newly queued messages as "on hold", pausing delivery. rules can be about
certain sender or recipient domains/addresses, or apply to all messages pausing
the entire queue. also useful for (local) testing.
new config options have been introduced. they are editable through the admin
and/or account web interfaces.
the webapi http endpoints are enabled for newly generated configs with the
quickstart, and in localserve. existing configurations must explicitly enable
the webapi in mox.conf.
gopherwatch.org was created to dogfood this code. it initially used just the
compose/smtpclient/imapclient mox packages to send messages and process
delivery feedback. it will get a config option to use the mox webapi/webhooks
instead. the gopherwatch code to use webapi/webhook is smaller and simpler, and
developing that shaped development of the mox webapi/webhooks.
for issue #31 by cuu508
The `TransportDirect` transport allows to tweak outgoing SMTP
connections to remote servers. Currently, it only allows to select
network IP family (ipv4, ipv6 or both).
For example, to disable ipv6 for all outgoing SMTP connections:
- add these lines in mox.conf to create a new transport named
"disableipv6":
```
Transports:
disableipv6:
Direct:
DisableIpv6: true
```
- then add these lines in domains.conf to use this transport:
```
Routes:
-
Transport: disableipv6
```
fix#149
both when parsing our configs, and for incoming on smtp or in messages.
so we properly compare things like é and e+accent as equal, and accept the
different encodings of that same address.
the current Intn calls in queue could be called concurrently, found by the race
detector with upcoming new tests. best to just prevent any possible concurrent
access.
so you can still know when someone has put you on their blocklist (which may
affect delivery), without using them.
also query dnsbls for our ips more often when we do more outgoing connections
for delivery: once every 100 messages, but at least 5 mins and at most 3 hours
since the previous check.
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.
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.
- prometheus is now behind an interface, they aren't dependencies for the
reusable components anymore.
- some dependencies have been inverted: instead of packages importing a main
package to get configuration, the main package now sets configuration in
these packages. that means fewer internals are pulled in.
- some functions now have new parameters for values that were retrieved from
package "mox-".
we don't want external software to include internal details like mlog.
slog.Logger is/will be the standard.
we still have mlog for its helper functions, and its handler that logs in
concise logfmt used by mox.
packages that are not meant for reuse still pass around mlog.Log for
convenience.
we use golang.org/x/exp/slog because we also support the previous Go toolchain
version. with the next Go release, we'll switch to the builtin slog.
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.
firstly by using crypto/rand in those cases. and secondly by putting a lock
around the Read (though it isn't used at the moment).
found while working while implementing sending tls reports.
getting mox to compile required changing code in only a few places where
package "syscall" was used: for accessing file access times and for umask
handling. an open problem is how to start a process as an unprivileged user on
windows. that's why "mox serve" isn't implemented yet. and just finding a way
to implement it now may not be good enough in the near future: we may want to
starting using a more complete privilege separation approach, with a process
handling sensitive tasks (handling private keys, authentication), where we may
want to pass file descriptors between processes. how would that work on
windows?
anyway, getting mox to compile for windows doesn't mean it works properly on
windows. the largest issue: mox would normally open a file, rename or remove
it, and finally close it. this happens during message delivery. that doesn't
work on windows, the rename/remove would fail because the file is still open.
so this commit swaps many "remove" and "close" calls. renames are a longer
story: message delivery had two ways to deliver: with "consuming" the
(temporary) message file (which would rename it to its final destination), and
without consuming (by hardlinking the file, falling back to copying). the last
delivery to a recipient of a message (and the only one in the common case of a
single recipient) would consume the message, and the earlier recipients would
not. during delivery, the already open message file was used, to parse the
message. we still want to use that open message file, and the caller now stays
responsible for closing it, but we no longer try to rename (consume) the file.
we always hardlink (or copy) during delivery (this works on windows), and the
caller is responsible for closing and removing (in that order) the original
temporary file. this does cost one syscall more. but it makes the delivery code
(responsibilities) a bit simpler.
there is one more obvious issue: the file system path separator. mox already
used the "filepath" package to join paths in many places, but not everywhere.
and it still used strings with slashes for local file access. with this commit,
the code now uses filepath.FromSlash for path strings with slashes, uses
"filepath" in a few more places where it previously didn't. also switches from
"filepath" to regular "path" package when handling mailbox names in a few
places, because those always use forward slashes, regardless of local file
system conventions. windows can handle forward slashes when opening files, so
test code that passes path strings with forward slashes straight to go stdlib
file i/o functions are left unchanged to reduce code churn. the regular
non-test code, or test code that uses path strings in places other than
standard i/o functions, does have the paths converted for consistent paths
(otherwise we would end up with paths with mixed forward/backward slashes in
log messages).
windows cannot dup a listening socket. for "mox localserve", it isn't
important, and we can work around the issue. the current approach for "mox
serve" (forking a process and passing file descriptors of listening sockets on
"privileged" ports) won't work on windows. perhaps it isn't needed on windows,
and any user can listen on "privileged" ports? that would be welcome.
on windows, os.Open cannot open a directory, so we cannot call Sync on it after
message delivery. a cursory internet search indicates that directories cannot
be synced on windows. the story is probably much more nuanced than that, with
long deep technical details/discussions/disagreement/confusion, like on unix.
for "mox localserve" we can get away with making syncdir a no-op.
people will either paste the records in their zone file. in that case, the
records will inherit "IN" from earlier records, and there will always be one
record. if anyone uses a different class, their smart enough to know they need
to add IN manually.
plenty of people will add their records through some clunky web interface of
their dns operator. they probably won't even have the choice to set the class,
it'll always be IN.
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.
the assumption has been that the hostname is something like mail.<domain>, when
setting up mox with the quickstart for user@<domain>. but users can use the
quickstart for postmaster@mail.<domain> as well.
for issue #46 by x8x, thanks for reporting!
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.
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.
it's still not great. better to automatically change domains.conf. but that
would currently rewrite the whole file, which may not be what admins that
manually edit expect, it would remove their comments. we need better
config-update code.
for issue #40
this doesn't really test the output of the ctl commands, just that they succeed
without error. better than nothing...
testing found two small bugs, that are not an issue in practice:
1. we were ack'ing streamed data from the other side of the ctl connection
before having read it. when there is no buffer space on the connection (always
the case for net.Pipe) that would cause a deadlock. only actually happened
during the new tests.
2. the generated dkim keys are relatively to the directory of the dynamic
config file. mox looked it up relative to the directory of the _static_ config
file at startup. this directory is typicaly the same. users would have noticed
if they had triggered this.
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.
