Social Recovery - DKIM

DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) is an email authentication method that allows the receiving mail server to check if the domain sent the email it claims to be sent from and if the content was tampered with during transit.

Here is how DKIM works:

• The sender's mail server generates a unique hash value of the email content.

• This hash value is then encrypted with a private key, which only the sender's server knows. The encrypted hash is also known as the DKIM signature and is inserted into the email header.

• The receiving server gets the email and sees in the header that it has a DKIM signature.

• The receiving server retrieves the corresponding public key from the sender's DNS records.

• Using this public key, the receiving server decrypts the hash value.

• The receiving server also generates its hash value of the received email content.

• It then compares this value with the decrypted hash value. If they match, the email is authenticated, meaning that it did indeed come from the claimed domain and was not tampered with during transit.

DKIM is often used in combination with SPF (Sender Policy Framework) and DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance) to provide robust protection against email spoofing and phishing. While SPF checks the sender's IP against a list of authorized IPs in the sender's DNS records, DMARC specifies what should be done if the SPF or DKIM checks fail.

In essence, DKIM validates a domain name identity associated with a message through cryptographic authentication.