The Automaton is our automated system that allows registrars to register and manipulate domain names. The Automaton can carry out a number of different operations, each of which has to be specifically requested by a registrar. The Automaton has two email queues used for different sets of operations. Messages to both queues are processed one at a time, in the order in which they were received.

PGP Signatures

The security of the Automaton is provided primarily by requiring registrars to use PGP signatures when sending email messages to the Automaton.  The signature is checked in the following process:

1. The date/time of the signature is checked to ensure that it was not created in the future or more than 72 hours before receipt of the message.  If it is out of date then the operation is rejected.
   
2. The ID of the PGP key used to create the signature is extracted from the signature.  This ID should correspond to a tag from a registered key.  If the ID is not recognised then the operation is rejected.
   
3. The checksum part of the signature is decrypted using the public key that we hold for that tag.  The message contents are checked to see that they have not been tampered with by recalculating the checksum and comparing with that supplied.  If the signatures do not match then the operation is rejected.

More information on how to setup and use PGP is available.

Operations

To use the Automaton you send a structured email with specific information in it.  This is described in the operations section.

Notifications

There are certain circumstances when the Automaton will send you a notification about a change that has happened to one of your domains.