Demo AWS SES SMTP

Demonstration of:

• Amazon Web Services (AWS)

• Simple Email Service (SES)

• Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP)

• Using the command line to send email

Contents:

• Documentation
• Security and TLS
• Encode SMTP username and SMTP password
• AUTH LOGIN
• Message example
• Connect

Documentation

Amazon Simple Email Service - Developer Guide

Amazon SES SMTP Issues

Testing Email Sending Using the Command Line

Security and TLS

For security, we prefer port 465 with implicit TLS encryption, rather than port 587 with STARTTLS.

https://www.fastmail.com/help/technical/ssltlsstarttls.html

Encode SMTP username and SMTP password

We need to base64 encode the SMTP creditials, which are our SMTP username (i.e. AWS Access Key Id) and SMTP password (i.e. AWS Secret Access Key).

Example fake credentials:

• AWS Access Key Id: BFDXL10M7DB052E3IGZ0

• AWS Secret Access Key: nzW10krHBW2Wdj9Qk+VoGe8HrLVdIU8IDUyeqDxE

Example encoding via the command base64:

$ echo -n "BFDXL10M7DB052E3IGZ0" | base64
QkZEWEwxME03REIwNTJFM0lHWjAK

$ echo -n "nzW10krHBW2Wdj9Qk+VoGe8HrLVdIU8IDUyeqDxE" | base64
bnpXMTBrckhCVzJXZGo5UWsrVm9HZThIckxWZElVOElEVXllcUR4RQo=

Example encoding via the command openssl:

$ echo -n "BFDXL10M7DB052E3IGZ0" | openssl enc -base64
QkZEWEwxME03REIwNTJFM0lHWjAK

$ echo -n "nzW10krHBW2Wdj9Qk+VoGe8HrLVdIU8IDUyeqDxE" | openssl enc -base64
bnpXMTBrckhCVzJXZGo5UWsrVm9HZThIckxWZElVOElEVXllcUR4RQo=

AUTH LOGIN

When we connect to AWS SES, we must send the command "AUTH LOGIN", then our authentication credentials.

Example command with fake credentials:

AUTH LOGIN
QkZEWEwxME03REIwNTJFM0lHWjAK
bnpXMTBrckhCVzJXZGo5UWsrVm9HZThIckxWZElVOElEVXllcUR4RQo=

Message example

This repo has a file message.txt that is a message example.

The file has the AUTH LOGIN (as above) and the fake example credentials (as above).

When you are ready to try the next step, to connect to AWS, you need to edit the file to replace the fake credentials with your real credentials.

Connect

Connect via the command line:

openssl s_client -crlf -quiet -connect email-smtp.us-east-1.amazonaws.com:465 < message.txt

Response:

depth=4 C = US, O = "Starfield Technologies, Inc.", OU = Starfield Class 2 Certification Authority
verify return:1
depth=3 C = US, ST = Arizona, L = Scottsdale, O = "Starfield Technologies, Inc.", CN = Starfield Services Root Certificate Authority - G2
verify return:1
depth=2 C = US, O = Amazon, CN = Amazon Root CA 1
verify return:1
depth=1 C = US, O = Amazon, OU = Server CA 1B, CN = Amazon
verify return:1
depth=0 CN = email-smtp.us-east-1.amazonaws.com
verify return:1
220 email-smtp.amazonaws.com ESMTP SimpleEmailService-d-N8DNVJOVF 1hh7w7XwCXyEHPypK4v6
250-email-smtp.amazonaws.com
250-8BITMIME
250-SIZE 10485760
250-AUTH PLAIN LOGIN
250 Ok
334 VXNlcm5hbWU6
334 UGFzc3dvcmQ6
235 Authentication successful.
250 Ok
250 Ok
354 End data with <CR><LF>.<CR><LF>
250 Ok 01000170d10e6a6c-71c65177-ce88-4135-9258-48c0e8bf916d-000000

The final line starts with the result code "250 Ok" which means AWS SES accepeted the message.

The final line then show the message id.