PKP/Bug Fixes/SPF

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Introduction

To combat spam and email phishing a new email system called the "Sender Policy Framework" (SPF) is being adopted world wide by academic institutions and others. This is a very recent development and therefore OJS systems must be retroactively configured to support SPF. This wiki page documents these efforts at Stellenbosch University Library.

What is the SPF?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sender_Policy_Framework

From Wikipedia (retrieved 2016/05/17);

"Sender Policy Framework (SPF) is a simple email-validation system designed to detect email spoofing by providing a mechanism to allow receiving mail exchangers to check that incoming mail from a domain comes from a host authorized by that domain's administrators.[1] The list of authorized sending hosts for a domain is published in the Domain Name System (DNS) records for that domain in the form of a specially formatted TXT record. Email spam and phishing often use forged "from" addresses, so publishing and checking SPF records can be considered anti-spam techniques."

How does the SPF work?

To determine if there is an SPF record for a sending domain, use the "dig" command as per example below in a terminal; 

dig txt sun.ac.za

See:http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4082935/using-dig-to-search-for-spf-records

As can be seen from the sample records below the implementation per institution differs, but the point is that each domain is now SPF enabled and therefore OJS must adapt.

Sample output for "sun.ac.za" (2016/05/17) 


; <<>> DiG 9.10.3-P4-Ubuntu <<>> txt sun.ac.za
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 50092
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 4, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1

;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 4000
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;sun.ac.za.			IN	TXT

;; ANSWER SECTION:
sun.ac.za.		25238	IN	TXT	"University of Stellenbosch, South Africa"
sun.ac.za.		25238	IN	TXT	"ydW1uk2ljPYuIuijeNP29VqLY1fH/1BYzJ8XkvuCmpe7b1pltGc4EaZcvw7V1PTKi5JkCgzH95fQNDdjOALHwQ=="
sun.ac.za.		25238	IN	TXT	"v=spf1 ip4:146.232.64.12 ip4:146.232.64.13 ip4:146.232.64.14 include:spf.protection.outlook.com -all"
sun.ac.za.		25238	IN	TXT	"Google Domain Verification 07082014"

;; Query time: 0 msec
;; SERVER: 127.0.1.1#53(127.0.1.1)
;; WHEN: Tue May 17 11:44:35 SAST 2016
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 353

Sample output for "uct.ac.za" (2016/05/17) 


; <<>> DiG 9.10.3-P4-Ubuntu <<>> txt uct.ac.za
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 62084
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 3, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1

;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 4000
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;uct.ac.za.			IN	TXT

;; ANSWER SECTION:
uct.ac.za.		3600	IN	TXT	"Ox1qfakkMKmET7grQG8BzAU0BFKkXZlwIZLm68SBnlYXFefU2YK8lhbZCzevz88UNYx5QNheElQe6z5u/uApjQ=="
uct.ac.za.		3600	IN	TXT	"v=spf1 ip4:137.158.153.103 ip4:137.158.153.104 ip4:137.158.154.116 ip4:137.158.154.166 ip4:137.158.154.117 ip4:137.158.154.165 a include:_netblocks.mimecast.com include:spf.protection.outlook.com ~all"
uct.ac.za.		3600	IN	TXT	"MS=ms97433074"

;; Query time: 11 msec
;; SERVER: 127.0.1.1#53(127.0.1.1)
;; WHEN: Tue May 17 11:48:43 SAST 2016
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 378

Sample output for "up.ac.za" (2016/05/17) 


; <<>> DiG 9.10.3-P4-Ubuntu <<>> txt up.ac.za
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 51005
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 3, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1

;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 4000
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;up.ac.za.			IN	TXT

;; ANSWER SECTION:
up.ac.za.		3600	IN	TXT	"google-site-verification=uZeP8pM4K0sBZNWCE4gAo8-gK4_WzH-nFuMRUlk4408"
up.ac.za.		3600	IN	TXT	"MS=ms60833582"
up.ac.za.		3600	IN	TXT	"v=spf1 ip4:137.215.0.0/16 mx ?all"

;; Query time: 22 msec
;; SERVER: 127.0.1.1#53(127.0.1.1)
;; WHEN: Tue May 17 11:50:04 SAST 2016
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 190

Using a "no-reply" email address for the system and an email address per journal as the "official" sender address

Step 1 - Add an MX DNS record and SPF record per system

To enable SPF for your federated domain you must FIRST add an "MX" record to your domain, so that the internet DNS servers know that your domain is a sender/receiver of emails.

Then add an SPF record in the DNS servers for your domain, that authorises your domain to send email via your domain only.

Step 2 - Enable the mail server per system

To enable a full email system on the server, type the following in a terminal as the "root" sudo user; 

sudo apt-get install tasksel

Then run the "tasksel" program as follows in a terminal; 

tasksel

In the menu that appears select "Mail Server".

Step 3 - Enable a system email sender address

For system mail to be managed, a no-reply system account needs to be created per federated system.

For example, for the "journals.ac.za" domain a "no-reply" email alias is created to deliver the "no-reply" email to the OJS system administrator, if needed.

See sample /etc/aliases file below; 

# See man 5 aliases for format
postmaster:    root
no-reply:      hgibson@sun.ac.za

See sample OJS config below; 

; Allow envelope sender to be specified
; (may not be possible with some server configurations)
allow_envelope_sender = On 

; Default envelope sender to use if none is specified elsewhere
default_envelope_sender = no-reply@journals.ac.za

; Force the default envelope sender (if present)
; This is useful if setting up a site-wide noreply address
; The reply-to field will be set with the reply-to or from address.
force_default_envelope_sender = On 

; Enable attachments in the various "Send Email" pages.
; (Disabling here will not disable attachments on features that
; require them, e.g. attachment-based reviews)
enable_attachments = On

; Amount of time required between attempts to send non-editorial emails
; in seconds. This can be used to help prevent email relaying via OJS.
time_between_emails = 3600

; Maximum number of recipients that can be included in a single email
; (either as To:, Cc:, or Bcc: addresses) for a non-priveleged user
max_recipients = 10

; If enabled, email addresses must be validated before login is possible.
require_validation = On 

; Maximum number of days before an unvalidated account expires and is deleted
validation_timeout = 14

Step 4 - Enable a per journal sender email address

For each journal created, a local account must be created, so that email can be sent by the OJS system using this local account as the official send/recieve email address for that journal.

To add an account, follow the instructions below in a terminal; 

adduser xxxx

Where xxxx is the acronym or abbreviation of the journal hosted... this is the "path" refered to in the OJS documentation.

So for the journal: http://www.journals.ac.za/index.php/sajev we type the following; 

adduser sajev

Then when doing the journal configuration use the "sajev@journals.ac.za" email account in the journal configuration for sending emails.

Then for reading emails delivered to "sajev@journals.ac.za" add an email alias to send the emails to the journal manager.

For example; 

# See man 5 aliases for format
postmaster:    root
sajev:         journal-manager@somedomain.whatever

Replace journal-manager@somedomain.whatever with a proper email address for the journal manager of that journal.

Then type "newaliases" as the "root" user to activate the new alias.

Notes for Stellenbosch University Library

For the single instance system used by Stellenbosch University Library, Step 4 above changes.

For the local instance only one email address is required.

For our situation we have chosen "manager" as the official send/recieve email address.

For example

For the: http://sajlis.journals.ac.za journal we use manager@sajlis.journals.ac.za as the official send/recieve email address of the journal.

And there is an alias for the "manager" email account to send the email to the managers real email address.

Using GMail as the "official" sender

It is expected that most institutions will allow sending of emails from the gmail servers. To apply this on OJS, try the following;

Sender Addresses in EMail

Like paper mail letters, e-mail messages have at least two kinds of sender addresses: one on the envelope and one in the letterhead.

The envelope sender address (sometimes also called the return-path) is used during the transport of the message from mail server to mail server, e.g. to return the message to the sender in the case of a delivery failure. It is usually not displayed to the user by mail programs.

The header sender address of an e-mail message is contained in the "From" or "Sender" header and is what is displayed to the user by mail programs. Generally, mail servers do not care about the header sender address when delivering a message.

References

Retrieved from "http://wiki.lib.sun.ac.za/index.php?title=PKP/Bug_Fixes/SPF&oldid=42414"