SMTP servers requiring security/authentication
"Jeff Stephenson (Exchange)" <[email protected]> Thu, 12 Jun 1997 15:10:15 -0700
| Newsgroups | gmane.ietf.apps-tls |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <2FBF98FC7852CF11912A000000000001050E8254@DINO> |
The SMTP AUTH draft (draft-myers-smtp-auth-05.txt), while providing a mechanism for a submitting client to authenticate to the server and establish a secure session, doesn't contain a provision for the server to inform the client that authentication or security are _required_ for submission. I'd like to see an addition to the draft which addresses how an SMTP server responds to SMTP commands when authentication or security are required but the client has not successfully issued an appropriate AUTH command. The current STARTTLS command (draft-hoffman-smtp-ssl-03.txt) has a provision along these lines, specifying a response of "505 Must issue a STARTTLS command first" to any command other than STARTTLS or QUIT if the server requires TLS. This might best be generalized to "505 Secure SMTP session required" and used in both the SMTP AUTH and STARTTLS worlds. Similarly, a server which required the client to authenticate could respond with "506 Authentication required" to anything but a command which could establish authentication. Clearly there are some ordering problems to be worked out here - if someone wants to do a STARTTLS to establish security (but not client identity) and an AUTH command to authenticate, we don't want the STARTTLS rejected because of lack of authentication.