-$Cambridge: exim/doc/doc-txt/experimental-spec.txt,v 1.12 2009/06/11 14:07:57 tom Exp $
-
From time to time, experimental features may be added to Exim.
While a feature is experimental, there will be a build-time
option whose name starts "EXPERIMENTAL_" that must be set in
liable to incompatibile change.
+OCSP Stapling support
+--------------------------------------------------------------
+
+X509 PKI certificates expire and can be revoked; to handle this, the
+clients need some way to determine if a particular certificate, from a
+particular Certificate Authority (CA), is still valid. There are three
+main ways to do so.
+
+The simplest way is to serve up a Certificate Revocation List (CRL) with
+an ordinary web-server, regenerating the CRL before it expires. The
+downside is that clients have to periodically re-download a potentially
+huge file from every certificate authority it knows of.
+
+The way with most moving parts at query time is Online Certificate
+Status Protocol (OCSP), where the client verifies the certificate
+against an OCSP server run by the CA. This lets the CA track all
+usage of the certs. This requires running software with access to the
+private key of the CA, to sign the responses to the OCSP queries. OCSP
+is based on HTTP and can be proxied accordingly.
+
+The only widespread OCSP server implementation (known to this writer)
+comes as part of OpenSSL and aborts on an invalid request, such as
+connecting to the port and then disconnecting. This requires
+re-entering the passphrase each time some random client does this.
+
+The third way is OCSP Stapling; in this, the server using a certificate
+issued by the CA periodically requests an OCSP proof of validity from
+the OCSP server, then serves it up inline as part of the TLS
+negotiation. This approach adds no extra round trips, does not let the
+CA track users, scales well with number of certs issued by the CA and is
+resilient to temporary OCSP server failures, as long as the server
+starts retrying to fetch an OCSP proof some time before its current
+proof expires. The downside is that it requires server support.
+
+If Exim is built with EXPERIMENTAL_OCSP and it was built with OpenSSL,
+then it gains one new option: "tls_ocsp_file".
+
+The file specified therein is expected to be in DER format, and contain
+an OCSP proof. Exim will serve it as part of the TLS handshake. This
+option will be re-expanded for SNI, if the tls_certificate option
+contains $tls_sni, as per other TLS options.
+
+Exim does not at this time implement any support for fetching a new OCSP
+proof. The burden is on the administrator to handle this, outside of
+Exim. The file specified should be replaced atomically, so that the
+contents are always valid. Exim will expand the "tls_ocsp_file" option
+on each connection, so a new file will be handled transparently on the
+next connection.
+
+Exim will check for a valid next update timestamp in the OCSP proof;
+if not present, or if the proof has expired, it will be ignored.
+
+At this point in time, we're gathering feedback on use, to determine if
+it's worth adding complexity to the Exim daemon to periodically re-fetch
+OCSP files and somehow handling multiple files. There is no client support
+for OCSP in Exim, this is feature expected to be used by mail clients.
+
+
+
+
Brightmail AntiSpam (BMI) suppport
--------------------------------------------------------------
in your Local/Makefile.
+DCC Support
+--------------------------------------------------------------
+
+*) Building exim
+
+In order to build exim with DCC support add
+
+EXPERIMENTAL_DCC=yes
+
+to your Makefile. (Re-)build/install exim. exim -d should show
+EXPERIMENTAL_DCC under "Support for".
+
+
+*) Configuration
+
+In the main section of exim.cf add at least
+ dccifd_address = /usr/local/dcc/var/dccifd
+or
+ dccifd_address = <ip> <port>
+
+In the DATA ACL you can use the new condition
+ dcc = *
+
+After that "$dcc_header" contains the X-DCC-Header.
+
+Returnvalues are:
+ fail for overall "R", "G" from dccifd
+ defer for overall "T" from dccifd
+ accept for overall "A", "S" from dccifd
+
+dcc = */defer_ok works as for spamd.
+
+The "$dcc_result" variable contains the overall result from DCC
+answer. There will an X-DCC: header added to the mail.
+
+Usually you'll use
+ defer !dcc = *
+to greylist with DCC.
+
+If you set, in the main section,
+ dcc_direct_add_header = true
+then the dcc header will be added "in deep" and if the spool
+file was already written it gets removed. This forces Exim to
+write it again if needed. This helps to get the DCC Header
+through to eg. SpamAssassin.
+
+If you want to pass even more headers in the middle of the
+DATA stage you can set
+ $acl_m_dcc_add_header
+to tell the DCC routines add more information; eg, you might set
+this to some results from ClamAV. Be careful. Header syntax is
+not checked and is added "as is".
+
+
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