1729258 - allow encrypting attachment (only)

Status: NEW

(MailNews Core :: Security: OpenPGP, enhancement)

Description

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Thunderbird should add a way to encrypt an attachment. I think there should be a context menu by which you can select "Encrypt...". Clicking it should trigger a wizard where you need to select the recipient (key) whom to encrypt for.

Comment 1

[Kai Engert [:KaiE:]]

The context menu suggested here could be added after we have fixed bug 1652332, which introduces some backend code for encrypting a file.

Also, if you really want to encrypt an attachment, but cannot encrypt the whole email, you might not have a public key for the recipient.

Also, your suggesting "prompt to select the key to encrypt for" might not be sufficient for mails with multiple recipients. It would require a more complex UI model, e.g. select multiple keys. Not sure we should go that way. Maybe we should indeed limit encrypting to a single public key, for simplicity.

So, a right click menu could offer "Encrypt using OpenPGP", and then the user would have to make another choice "Encrypt using a OpenPGP public key that I select" or "Encrypt using password based encryption".

For password based encryption, again two choices could be offered, "allow me to enter the password used for OpenPGP password-based encryption", or "automatically create a new random password for OpenPGP password-based encryption". (The patch from bug 1652332 implements the latter.)