Entity-Separated Email Domain Authentication for Open Sign-Up Fraud
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing email validation systems fail to effectively prevent fraudulent emails from open sign-up domains and domains masquerading as legitimate ones, leading to security vulnerabilities and false positives/negatives, especially when dealing with emails from unknown or unverified sources.
Innovation Solution
An email validation system that includes an email validation agent and system to authenticate email domains by comparing sender addresses to trusted contacts and known domains, using hashing to protect privacy, and employing machine learning to verify new domains, with remediation actions for unverified emails.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of manufacture
If simple blacklist or whitelist systems are used to check email domains, then implementation is easy and quick, but they generate many false positives and negatives and create security vulnerabilities
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the email validation process into multiple independent components: extracting domain information from email addresses, checking domains against a comprehensive list of known fraudulent domains, verifying DMARC policies, and validating against open sign-up domains. Each segment handles a specific aspect of validation, improving overall accuracy while maintaining implementation simplicity through modular design
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces an intermediary validation system that acts as a mediator between the receiving email system and the central repository. This intermediary layer performs domain validation, DMARC verification, and open sign-up domain checking before emails reach the central system, reducing false positives and negatives while maintaining security without requiring complex centralized control
2Extent of automation
If emails are transmitted to a central system for domain checking, then centralized validation can be performed, but security vulnerabilities arise by transmitting emails containing sensitive information
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts only the essential domain information from email addresses for validation purposes, rather than transmitting entire emails to the central system. The validation system checks extracted domains against known fraudulent domain lists and verifies DMARC policies locally, eliminating the need to transmit sensitive email content to a central repository while maintaining automated validation capabilities
Solution Approach 2:
The patent enables receiving email systems to perform self-validation by implementing domain checking and DMARC verification locally. The system autonomously validates incoming emails by checking domains against maintained lists and verifying authentication policies without requiring centralized processing, thereby maintaining automated validation while eliminating security risks associated with transmitting sensitive information to external systems
3Reliability
If traditional validation services like SPF and DMARC are used, then email spoofing can be prevented, but they cannot detect fraudulent domains that are not spoofing legitimate ones
Solution Approach 1:
The patent creates a universal validation system that performs multiple functions: traditional SPF and DMARC verification for spoofing prevention, plus domain checking against comprehensive lists of known fraudulent domains, and validation against open sign-up domains. This multi-functional approach maintains protection against email spoofing while adding the capability to detect fraudulent domains that masquerade as legitimate ones, addressing both spoofing and impersonation threats
4Reliability
If comprehensive domain validation is performed on all incoming emails, then security against fraudulent emails is improved, but system complexity and processing time increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent performs preliminary validation actions by maintaining pre-computed lists of known fraudulent domains and open sign-up domains. When an email arrives, the system quickly checks the domain against these pre-prepared lists before performing more complex DMARC verification. This preliminary filtering approach provides comprehensive security while reducing overall processing time and system complexity by handling common cases efficiently
Data Source
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AI summary
An email validation system receives an email validation request from a requestor to validate an email, the email validation request indicating at least a sender domain indicating a domain of the sender of the email. The email validation system determines whether the sender domain is in a whitelist of known domains, wherein a known domain is a domain that is linked to an organization whose provenance is known, such that it can be linked to an identifiable entity in the real world. The email validation system generates, in response to determining that the sender domain is not in the list of known domains, a message indicating that the email is not valid. The email validation system generates, in response to determining that the sender domain is in the list of known domains, the message indicating that the email is valid, and transmits the message to the requestor.