Mail delivery failure

[Geoffrey Leach]

A piece of outgoing mail was (apparently) rejected by the hugshnet mail system. Short version:

This message was created automatically by the mail system (ecelerity).

Received-SPF: softfail (smtp02.hughes.cmh.synacor.com: transitional domain hughes.net does not designate 184.53.48.217 as permitted sender)

FWIW, my assigned IP is  184.53.48.9

Long version: here are the headers

From: Mail Delivery System <postmaster@hughes.net>
To: geoff@hughes.net
Subject: Mail Delivery Failure
Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2020 06:08:10 -0400

This message was created automatically by the mail system (ecelerity).

A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its
recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed:

>>> oriana@almagourmet.com (while not connected): 554 5.4.7 [internal] exceeded max retries without delivery

------ This is a copy of the headers of the original message. ------

Return-Path: <geoff@hughes.net>
X-Authed-Username: Z2VvZmZAaHVnaGVzLm5ldA==
X_CMAE_Category: 0,0 Undefined,Undefined
X-CNFS-Analysis: v=2.1 cv=Zb69TphA c=1 sm=0 tr=0 a=alMjyCJoxyUBoW4irxABtg==:117 a=alMjyCJoxyUBoW4irxABtg==:17 a=L9H7d07YOLsA:10 a=9cW_t1CCXrUA:10 a=s5jvgZ67dGcA:10 a=kj9zAlcOel0A:10 a=g-rBkFOlAAAA:8 a=inrySznMs_wvFKEwMCYA:9 a=N4bSDcBWTFA8dNBa:21 a=7gj18nmP-8DkfkB9:21 a=CjuIK1q_8ugA:10 a=-qui4eJqTRsA:10 a=yfmmBuS0vy3znAOsZFac:22
X-CM-Score: 0
X-Scanned-by: Cloudmark Authority Engine
Authentication-Results: smtp02.hughes.cmh.synacor.com smtp.mail=geoff@hughes.net; spf=softfail; sender-id=softfail
Authentication-Results: smtp02.hughes.cmh.synacor.com header.from=geoff@hughes.net; sender-id=softfail
Authentication-Results: smtp02.hughes.cmh.synacor.com smtp.user=geoff@hughes.net; auth=pass (LOGIN)
Received-SPF: softfail (smtp02.hughes.cmh.synacor.com: transitional domain hughes.net does not designate 184.53.48.217 as permitted sender)
Received: from [184.53.48.217] ([184.53.48.217:31452] helo=puget.mtranch.com)
by smtp.hughes.net (envelope-from <geoff@hughes.net>)
(ecelerity 2.2.3.49 r(42060/42061)) with ESMTPSA (cipher=AES256-SHA)
id F4/1A-21554-15F9B9E5; Sat, 18 Apr 2020 20:46:14 -0400
Date: Sat, 18 Apr 2020 17:46:01 -0700
From: Geoffrey Leach <geoff@hughes.net>
To: "Oriana" <oriana@almagourmet.com>
Subject: Re: Order Update
Message-ID: <20200417191030.414d74b7@puget.mtranch.com>
In-Reply-To: <02c401d614e7$fea9a560$fbfcf020$@almagourmet.com>
References: <02c401d614e7$fea9a560$fbfcf020$@almagourmet.com>
X-Mailer: Claws Mail 3.17.4 (GTK+ 2.24.32; x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

[MarkJFine · Accepted solution]

First, the mx's IP was 184.53.48.217 (your IP doesn't matter, since you're not the email server). It is not discretely listed in the DMARC spec, but may be a part of one of the two includes listed.

Second, a simple host lookup of 184.53.48.217 gives me host1845321748.direcway.com, which might be an alias to smtp02.hughes.cmh.synacor.com, but who knows.

Finally, it looks like almagourmet.com rejected your email on an SPF Softfail when hughes.net has a DMARC record in their DNS, but:
    a. no policy is listed (usually set to reject or quarantine if there is an SPF failure); and
    b. The DMARC spec ends with a "~all", which means to softfail any IP that's not listed.

Bottom line: Seems like almagormet's settings are a little severe in that they're not following the policy recommendation, nor are they dealing with a softfail correctly.

[Geoffrey Leach]

Thanks for the analysis. Very helpful.