How To Check SPF Records Using Nslookup, Dig Or PowerShell?

It’s important to conduct an SPF record check periodically to ensure no unauthorized entity misuses your domain to send malicious emails. nslookup and dig can help you verify your SPF record. Let’s see how this can be done on different operating systems.

Key Takeaways

Regular SPF record checks are essential to protect your domain from unauthorized use and phishing attacks.
An SPF record is a DNS TXT record that specifies which IP addresses are allowed to send emails on behalf of your domain.
Implementing SPF can significantly improve your email deliverability rate and reduce the likelihood of your emails being marked as spam.
DMARC compliance enhances email authentication and ensures proper handling of emails that fail SPF or DKIM checks.
Using nslookup is a straightforward way to check and verify SPF records across different operating systems.

What is an SPF Record?

SPF record is a DNS TXT record that has a list of all the IP addresses allowed to send emails using your domain. Domain owners enter arbitrary text into the DNS, and a list is formed. SPF records were introduced as SMTP doesn’t authenticate the ‘from’ address in an email, which allows a hacker to imitate a sender and manipulate a recipient into sharing sensitive information.

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How Does an SPF Record Work?

The recipient’s server checks SPF records by authenticating the domain’s Return-Path value in email headers. This helps the receiving server scout the sender’s DNS server for a TXT record. When you use SPF, it works to identify all authorized senders from which a company can send emails. nslookup SPF record check fails when a specific IP is not enlisted in the record. In this case, the email is rejected and marked as spam.

Why Should You Check SPF Records?

SPF record is stored within a DNS database and carries information that can help you manage the following:

Phishing Attacks

If you don’t implement a mechanism to filter authenticated and unauthenticated emails sent from your domain, hackers are likely to misuse it. They can impersonate you or your employees and send fake emails asking for sensitive details or impart wrong information to customers, prospects, shareholders, media, employees, etc.

With authentication protocols in place and regular nslookup SPF, it becomes harder for threat actors to execute an attack in your name.

Email Deliverability Rate

SPF helps decrease the bounce-back rate or the chances of your emails landing in the spam folder. Otherwise, this can lead to a poor email deliverability rate which means your domain’s ability to reach the intended audience’s inbox will be hampered. This will eventually impact communication with customers, prospects, shareholders, media, employees, etc.

DMARC Compliance

DMARC is another email authentication protocol that keeps checks on the working of SPF and DKIM. It dictates how to treat emails that have failed SPF and DKIM checks. Depending on the selected policy, these emails are either marked as spam, rejected, or delivered normally.

Regular DMARC record lookup helps you analyze your record to see if any modifications are required to make the process foolproof. Once published on your DNS, you can receive daily reports about domain spoofing attempts.

What are nslookup, dig, and PowerShell?

Before understanding how to check SPF records using nslookup, dig, or PowerShell, let’s first understand what these tools are.

nslookup, dig, and PowerShell’s Resolve-DnsName command are tools that allow internet server administrators or computer users to enter a hostname and see its corresponding IP address or DNS record. You can also do this with a command to perform a reverse DNS lookup and get the hostname for any IP address you know.

nslookup helps troubleshoot server connections and resolve cybersecurity issues. It lets you prevent phishing attacks where a cyber actor creates a domain whose name is similar to yours. For example, creating amaz0n.com to replicate amazon.com. Note that the forged domain has replaced the letter O with the numeral 0. Recipients often overlook these tiny alterations and believe the message is sent from genuine sources.

You can also avert DNS cache poisoning, an attack where a hacker falsifies the information that your computer receives when it asks for a website’s IP address.