DKIM fails due to signature date being in the future

Products

• Messaging Gateway

Issue/Introduction

You have found that messages to specific recipient mail server(s) are failing DKIM validation. DKIM validation passes for other recipient mail servers. The failing messages might have a header indicating that the signature has a time discrepancy similar to the following:

X-ZohoMail-DKIM: fail (Signature date is -47 seconds in the future.)

Cause

The failure message indicates that there is a time difference between the Messaging Gateway and the recipient mail server. 

Resolution

To resolve this issue, make sure the Messaging Gateway date/time is using a standardized time by configuring the usage of Network Time Protocol (NTP).

 

 

Additional Information

See the following articles for more information on configuring NTP:

Verifying or changing the time settings on a host

DNS/Time