Introduction to BGP Routing Security - Part 1: BGP Peering with Quagga Quagga is a network routing software suite providing implementations of various routing protocols, including RIP, OSPF and BGP. It is a fork of the discontinued GNU Zebra project, and utilises a configuration syntax very similar to that of Cisco IOS. An 1804 illustration by Samuel Daniell of a South African quagga, an extinct subspecies of plains zebra after which the Quagga network routing software suite was named. Source (Public Domain) Unlike traditional routing daemons which interact directly with the kernel, Quagga operates a central kernel routing manager (known as zebra) which exposes an API to the various Quagga routing daemons. This allows the routing daemons to be enabled, disabled and configured on a 'pick and mix' basis, including the ability to run multiple of the same routing daemon on one machine. This article and series will be primarily focusing on Quagga BGPd, which is Quagga's BGP routing implementation. Continue reading...

Using SPF Macros to Solve the Operational Challenges of SPF Sender Policy Framework (SPF) provides a way to restrict the mail servers that are permitted to send as your domain, and is particularly effective when used with DMARC. However, maintaining an SPF policy for a large or complex infrastructure with numerous distinct mail servers can pose a significant operational challenge. Some of the most common issues include: SPF record is too long

Maximum number of DNS lookups has been reached

Keeping your SPF record up-to-date when mail is sent by third-parties

Keeping track of which whitelisted senders are for what, who put them there, and removing them when they're no-longer needed

Having to globally whitelist third-party systems when they only need to send-as a single or small number of addresses

SPF record syntax becoming messy or breaking when it is maintained by multiple different people SPF macros, a seldom used yet widely supported feature of the SPF specification, provide a potential solution to some of these challenges. This article includes an introduction to SPF macros, as well as several examples of how they can be used to solve the various operational complications that SPF so often poses. Continue reading...