Mail Exchangers for Kolab Groupware¶
Kolab Groupware integrates mail exchangers with the rest of the groupware environment, adding features such as;
Delegation (secretary functionality),
Envelope sender address verification and authorization,
Mandatory access control policy enforcement.
These features ensure the integrity of messages.
Overview¶
The following diagram illustrates the implementation of a single Kolab Groupware mail exchanger with all features enabled.
Local Networks
The networks considered Local Networks are configured using the mynetworks setting.
By default, this setting includes all locally attached subnets. The assumption is therefore, that only server systems are attached to the locally attached subnets, and not users.
Systems in mynetworks are permitted to use the mail exchanger as a relay host.
Mandatory Access Policy Enforcement
Both the MSA and MTA consult the Kolab SMTP Access Policy for mandatory access control enforcement.
On the MSA level, the following policies are enforced:
The user must be authenticated successfully.
Actually authenticating the user is the responsibility of the Kolab SASL Authentication daemon, which authenticates the user against LDAP.
The authenticated user must be authorized to use the envelope sender address specified in the message being submitted.
A user is considered authorized to use the envelope sender address if either the following is true;
The user itself is also the final recipient for messages sent to the envelope sender address, such as would be the case with mail and alias attribute values, or
The user has been specifically authorized to send “on behalf of” the original owner of the envelope sender address.
The user must not be disallowed to send messages to the recipients listed in the message being submitted.
For the envelope recipient addresses that are considered local recipients, each target recipient’s access control policies are checked requiring the sender to not be disallowed to send to the intended recipient.
3rd Party Groupware
3rd Party Groupware solutions may be integrated into the Kolab Groupware environment up to and including the split of a single domain name space.
Content-Filter
Kolab Groupware includes a content filter under the name of Wallace.
Postfix¶
mydestination¶
Using an LDAP lookup table /etc/postfix/ldap/mydestination.cf
, Postfix is
configured to query cn=kolab,cn=config
for (associatedDomain=%s)
entries, where %s
is substituted for the domain part of envelope recipient
address.
For domain name spaces that are found here, Kolab uses local_recipient_maps to validate the full envelope recipient address.
mynetworks¶
relay_domains¶
local_recipient_maps¶
The Postfix setting local_recipient_maps
, of which the current configuration
value can be retrieved with:
# postconf local_recipient_maps
consists of a list of lookup tables, against which a recipient address is validated.
Postfix queries each table, and stops processing when the lookup against a table returns a value – ergo, the order of lookup tables used is important.
Suppose a user “John Doe <john.doe@example.org>”, a regular Kolab user, receives a message.
First, Postfix would verify whether inbound messages for the domain name space of
example.org
are indeed to be delivered locally, using mydestination, or need to be relayed (using relay_domains).For domain name spaces that are indeed to be delivered locally, Postfix iterates over the lookup tables configured in
local_recipient_maps
. In a default Kolab groupware installation, this is the following list:Regular Kolab users, using filter
(&(|(mail=%s)(alias=%s))(objectclass=kolabinetorgperson))
.Mail recipients with forwarding address, using filter
(&(|(mail=%s)(alias=%s))(objectclass=mailrecipient)(objectclass=inetorgperson)(mailforwardingaddress=*))
.Shared folders with mail delivery enabled, using filter
(&(|(mail=%s)(alias=%s))(objectclass=kolabsharedfolder)(kolabFolderType=mail))
.Static distribution groups, using filter
(&(|(mail=%s)(alias=%s))(objectclass=kolabgroupofuniquenames))
.Dynamic distribution groups, using filter
(&(|(mail=%s)(alias=%s))(objectclass=kolabgroupofurls))
.
Because of the nature of these individual queries, and their handling being all the same, the filter can basically be concatenated into:
(&(|(mail=%s)(alias=%s))(|(objectclass=kolabinetorgperson)(objectclass=kolabsharedfolder)(objectclass=kolabgroupofuniquenames)(objectclass=kolabgroupofurls)(&(objectclass=mailrecipient)(mailforwardingaddress=*))))
relay_recipient_maps¶
Postfix & the Kolab SMTP Access Policy¶
The Kolab SMTP Access Policy is a policy service for Postfix that applies mandatory recipient and sender address access controls using the Postfix SMTPD Policy.
It verifies envelope sender address used in the message against the authentication and authorization database.
What the Kolab SMTP Access Policy is¶
The policy service is the implementation of a fine-grained mandatory access control system, that allows delegatees to be appointed authorization (by administrators, and delegators) to use the delegator’s email address(es) as the envelope sender address for messages the delegatees send, and/or allows an administrator –or individual, if you’ll permit this through custom ACI– to configure a user account to be restricted access to receive from and/or send to only individual addresses, groups, group members, domain name spaces, and groups of domain name spaces.
As such, a corporate board or directors for example, may have a distribution group ‘board@example.com’ to which only the members of the board of directors are allowed to send messages, but no one else.
Note that this is slightly different from a mailing list such as implemented with Majordomo or Mailman. While these technologies could require approved, subscription-based submission of messages even though in a more enhanced fashion, the subscribers list to such a mailing list is not based on LDAP group membership, organizational unit orientation, roles, queries or otherwise related to regular user provisioning, human resources, organizational roles and identity management.
Similarly, each of the board members may authorize assisting personal to respond to email using their own envelope sender address. Here’s how that works:
John Doe, the Chief Executive Officer¶
John has a lovely secretary called Lucy. John allows Lucy to read and write to John’s Calendar, and opens up his INBOX folder to Lucy for read-only access.
John however, being a CEO and all that, tends to be unable to regularly read his email and take the time to respond. Internet is only free of charge half an hour a time, twice, at Schiphol. John would like Lucy to be able to respond on his behalf (especially to those invitations for random events a CEO has little interest in). John therefore authorizes Lucy to “send on behalf of”. This is considered a Kolab Delegate -future enhancements notwithstanding.
In LDAP, this would look as follows:
dn: uid=doe,ou=People,dc=example,dc=org
cn: John Doe
(...)
mail: john.doe@example.org
(...)
kolabDelegate: uid=meier,ou=People,dc=example,dc=org
(...)
What the Kolab SMTP Access Policy is not¶
The Kolab SMTP Access Policy applies access control between senders and recipients on an individual, per-entity basis. It can be used to restrict an individual user from receiving from or sending to other recipients or senders, including entire domain name spaces, but it does not apply a global blacklist/whitelist mechanism.
When?¶
The Kolab SMTP Access Policy needs to be executed in desired points in a mail-flow.
A typical deployment executes the Kolab SMTP Access Policy upon receiving messages, or in other words, in smtpd and submission. The submission part is the most illustrative of why the Kolab SMTP Access Policy works the way it does.
Kolab SMTP Access Policy in Action During Submission¶
The submission of a new email by a user of Kolab Groupware has the following three interesting stages;
MAIL FROM
There is always one envelope sender address.
RCPT TO
There are one or more recipients for each message.
DATA
In the DATA SMTP protocol state, the envelope sender and all recipients are known. It is here that the Kolab SMTP Access Policy starts checking the policies that apply to the sender and recipients in one go.
Postfix allows for more and different restrictions to be configured to check the policy, but these are the interesting ones.
Using the Postfix sender restrictions allows the Kolab SMTP Access Policy to verify certain information, and otherwise block the mail early on. Note that the first policy request occurs in protocol state RCPT, and thus also the first recipient for the message is being supplied in the policy request. For the purpose of verifying the sender’s authorization to use the envelope sender address access however, this is of little interest.
Is the sender authenticated?
Is the authenticated sender allowed to use the envelope sender address?
Envelope sender addresses that a user is typically allowed to use include primary and secondary email addresses directly associated with the user’s entity in the authentication and authorization database.
Other address may include any of the email addresses the user has been made an authorized Kolab delegate for.
In case these checks are successful the Kolab SMTP Access Policy either continues with “checking” the recipient - please see notes later on.
If configured to not also check recipient (the default is to check recipients too) the Kolab SMTP Access Policy returns action DUNNO, which indicates to Postfix the policy service doesn’t care about blocking nor accepting the message. Please see the notes later on for more information.
Using the Postfix recipient restrictions allows the Kolab SMTP Access Policy to aggregate all recipients to which the message is intended. The Kolab SMTP Access Policy has no interest in blocking at this stage, and will always return DUNNO.
It is not until the very last policy request in the DATA protocol state, that Postfix allows the Kolab SMTP Access Policy to iterate over the information received so far, and let the Kolab SMTP Access Policy know the parts of the complete message submission that involves sender and one or more recipients is over.
It is therefor crucially important that the Kolab SMTP Access Policy process spawned by Postfix only exits after a complete message policy request has finished (DATA protocol state, at which all possible MAIL FROM and RCPT TO must have been submitted by the client), and it has given Postfix back to ultimate policy request result.
It is to this end, that the Kolab SMTP Access Policy reads policy requests, for as long as it can, until it reaches the DATA protocol state. Only then does the Kolab SMTP Access Policy actually check sender access policies and recipient access policies. During the RCPT TO protocol state, the policy service will return DUNNO using function ignore(_(“No objections yet”)).
Graph Legend
Recipient Domain Check
The recipient domain check establishes whether the domain part of the envelope recipient email addresses is local, or remote.
Domains considered local are those listed in mydestination and those in relay_domains.
Recipient Address Check
For envelope recipients in local domains, the address must be a valid address that can be found using local_recipient_maps for domains in mydestination, and/or relay_recipient_maps for domains in relay_domains.
Sender Identity Check
Delegation Check
Sender Recipient Access Policy Check
Recipient Local Check
Recipient Sender Address Policy Check
Wallace¶
Wallace is a Kolab Groupware content-filter, adding functionality to the environment including:
Enforcement of invitation policies,
Resource scheduling,
GnuPG-based encryption of inbound email to local recipients,
Appending of footers (plain text and html) and signatures,
Data-Loss Prevention (DLP),
(…)
Wallace listens on port 10026 by default, and is provided with messages by Postfix. After handling the message, Wallace submits the message back to Postfix on port 10027 (by default).
Enforcement of invitation policies¶
The invitationpolicy module of Wallace picks up incoming messages and identifies iTip invitations or replies which address a local user. Depending on the recipient’s invitation policy settings or the global default, the iTip message is either automatically processed (e.g. accepting event invitations if available) or forwarded to the user’s inbox or calendar for manual confirmation.
iTip messages can hold invitations to events or assignments to tasks. The invitation policy module processes both according to the individual settings. One can specify policies for either all invitations or specific for event or task objects.
A user’s invitation policy settings are stored in LDAP using the
kolabInvitationPolicy
attribute which can contain multiple values which are processed
from top to bottom until one matches the situation.
Find a reference of possible values to compose the invitation policy set in the Administrator Guide.
Auto-updating all participant’s calendars¶
Along with the auto-update policy, wallace can also update copies of the referenced event in all the participant’s calendars. With the regular iTip workflow, an iTip REPLY will only inform the organizer about the participation status of an individual. With auto-updating enabled, the server will also automatically update the status of the replying attendee in the personal calendar of all other listed participants.
Resource scheduling¶
The resource scheduling module of Wallace picks up incoming messages and identifies iTip invitations which address a resource. The invited resource’s calendar is consulted and the invitation is either accepted or declined depending on the resource’s availability for the requested time. Accepted invitations are added to the resource calendar and are considered “booked”. The module automatically responds to the event organizer with an according iTip REPLY message.
Optionally, the owner of the resource will be notified about new bookings.
Resource collections and invitation delegation¶
Kolab has the concept of organizing mutliple resources of the same type in resource collections. Think of a set of projector devices which are available but usually one wants to book “a beamer”. This would be a resource collection which receives an iTip invitation.
Such invitations will allocate a concrete member of the collection which is available
for the requested time and delegate the invitation to the according resource.
The delegation is reflected in the iTip replies sent to the organizer according to
the iTip specification (RFC 2446) with the
resource collection responding with PARTSTAT=DELEGATED
and the allocated resource
also responding to the organizer with PARTSTAT=ACCEPTED
.