* DomainKeys Identified Mail
DKIM fights phishing and e-mail forgery
By Miles Libbey
E-mail fraud is a global problem that plagues consumers and businesses, costing millions of dollars in direct losses, technology expenditures, lost productivity and network downtime. With phishing attacks on the rise, leading companies are working to develop e-mail authentication protocols that protect users from e-mail fraud.
DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) is an e-mail authentication proposal that strengthens user protection from e-mail forgery, and increases accountability for spam and phishing scams. DKIM defines a domain-level authentication framework for e-mail using public key cryptography and key server technology to permit verification of the source and contents of messages by mail transport agents or mail user agents. The goal of this framework is to prove and protect message sender identity and the integrity of the messages they convey, while retaining the functionality of Internet e-mail as it’s known today.
The specification merges Yahoo’s DomainKeys and Cisco’s Internet Identified Mail e-mail verification technologies, which have similar attributes. Cisco and Yahoo submitted the combined technology to IETF last month http://www.networkworld.com/news/2005/071105-yahoo-cisco.html for consideration as an e-mail industry standard and to help enable industry-wide adoption of the technology.
DKIM uses public key cryptography to let users verify and maintain message integrity, and identifies legitimate messages. The proposed standard uses DNS in the same manner as DomainKeys, Yahoo’s anti-spam protocol, which is in use around the world. DKIM also leverages Cisco’s Internet Identified Mail header-signing technology, ensuring signature consistency as messages are sent through networks.
For more, including the benefits of DKIM and how it works, go to: http://www.networkworld.com/news/tech/2005/080805techupdate.html
