Collected research

Composition Kills: 18 Attacks on Email Sender Authentication

Composition Kills: A Case Study of Email Sender Authentication

Jianjun Chen, Vern Paxson and Jian Jiang · usenix.org

Inconsistent message parsing between the components of email systems lets attackers bypass SPF, DKIM, and DMARC to impersonate arbitrary senders and forge DKIM-signed mail with a legitimate site's signature. Manual analysis plus black-box fuzzing found 18 evasion techniques that worked against 10 email providers and 19 clients, all vulnerable.

Record

Document

Composition Kills: A Case Study of Email Sender Authentication

Researcher

Jianjun Chen, Vern Paxson and Jian Jiang

Published by

usenix.org

Topic

Identity

In the archive

• Collected in the 2020 research round

Related sources

• Tool Repository
• Paper project page
• You have No Idea Who Sent that Email: 18 Attacks on Email Sender Authentication
• USENIX Security '20 - Composition Kills: A Case Study of Email Sender Authentication

Tags

• email
• smtp
• parser-differential
• auth-bypass
• injection
• fuzzing
• measurement-study
• owasp-a01-2021
• owasp-a03-2021

This page is the archive's own catalogue record. The research is the work of Jianjun Chen, Vern Paxson and Jian Jiang, first published at the original source. Preserved copies are kept so the citation survives its host; this one was last captured on 19 August 2026.