1654978 - Store original source code of sent encrypted mail

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(MailNews Core :: Security: OpenPGP, enhancement)

Description

[u617804]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:68.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/68.0

Steps to reproduce:

Send a signed&encrypted message, want to figure out, what TB does: if it first signs and then encrypts the signed text, or other way round, or signs/encrypts and then signs again.

Actual results:

Could not view the original source code of the sent encrypted message, as this seems not to be stored.

Expected results:

User should have possibility to view the original source code of a sent encrypted message.

Comment 1

[Kai Engert [:KaiE:]]

If you click on a message, use the menu "view / message source" to view the raw source of the message.
Or, use file save as, to save the message as a file, then use a text editor to open that file.

That will show you the message as it was received.

We keep the message in that format on disk and on the email server.

Comment 2

[u617804]

OK, that's true, the source code of the sent mail is the one shown for the received mail (tested by sending from one mail account of me to another one).

I really just really did not expect this, as TB shows the message content from the mail in the sent folder, although it cannot decrypt it's shown source code.

This is on the one hand very nice and usable, on the other hand I am confused, do not understand how this magically works.

Comment 3

[Kai Engert [:KaiE:]]

Each time a message is encrypted, a new random key is generated.
This random key is then encrypted with the public key of each recipient, and also with your own public key.

An encrypted message is the combination of the encrypted original message, plus some extra data packets. There are extra packets for each recipient. In the packets you can find for which recipient key id this is intended. The respective recipient can encrypt their packet with their secret key. That gives them the random key that was used to encrypt the message.

Each time you click an encrypted message, we look for the packet that matches the secret keys we have, decrypt it, get the message decryption key, then decrypt the message, then show the message.

Because the message was sent to the specified recipients, and also to your own public key, you can use your secret key to decrypt and read the copy of the encrypted message that is stored in your sent folder.