RFC 8617: The Authenticated Received Chain (ARC) Protocol
In plain English — editorial summary, not part of the RFC
The Authenticated Received Chain (ARC) protocol provides an authenticated "chain of custody" for a message, allowing each entity that handles the message to see what entities handled it before and what the message's authentication assessment was at each step in the handling. ARC allows Internet Mail Handlers to attach assertions of message authentication assessment to individual messages. As messages traverse ARC-enabled Internet Mail Handlers, additional ARC assertions can be attached to messages to form ordered sets of ARC assertions that represent the authentication assessment at each step of the message-handling paths. ARC-enabled Internet Mail Handlers can process sets of ARC assertions to inform message disposition decisions, identify Internet Mail Handlers that might break existing authentication mechanisms, and convey original authentication assessments across trust boundaries.
Document record
- Document ID
- RFC8617
- Published
- July 2019
- Authors
- K. Andersen; B. Long; S. Blank; M. Kucherawy
- Status
- EXPERIMENTAL
- Stream
- IETF
- Area
- art
- Pages
- 35
- Also known as
- —
Topics
Related documents
Ranked automatically by shared keywords, IETF area and stream — not by editorial selection.
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- RFC 5672RFC 4871 DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) Signatures -- UpdateObsoleted
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- RFC 5617DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) Author Domain Signing Practices (ADSP)Updated
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- RFC 8616Email Authentication for Internationalized MailCurrent
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The document record above — title, authors, date, status, stream, area, relationships, DOI and errata — is imported verbatim from the public RFC Editor index. The “in plain English” section is editorial: written by The metasystema editorial team, not part of the RFC. Where the two differ, the RFC text governs.
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