1751463 - Deleted identity key is still shown as "assigned" in identity properties. TB should automatically associate other available private key or ask user

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(MailNews Core :: Security: OpenPGP, defect)

Description

[u617804]

Attachment: identities openpgp properties after key was deleted

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:91.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/91.0

Steps to reproduce:

TB 91.5.0

Go to an "other identitiy" of a mail account that has no OpenPGP key pair yet, and create a key pair (private+public key, let the default, expiry 3 years, RSA, 3072 bit) for that identity.

Then go to OpenPGP key manager and delete the key. Answer "yes" when it is asked if the private key should be deleted.

Restart TB

Go to the OpenPGP-properties section of the identity above.

Actual results:

In the identities OpenPGP setting TB shows that the deleted key would be "currently in use" with a green check mark, but underneath the key is shown in grey with comment "this key is not found, you would need to import it to use it". (see screenshot)

Expected results:

I would have expected that TB shows "There is no key associated with this identity" and no key information shown at all.

I am not really sure if this is a bug or a feature.

At least this is not what I expected, it makes me uncertain.

Comment 1

[u617804]

I ran into this again, because of bug 1780148 comment 1 I had to generate another private key for a mail identity.
After creating of the new key, I deleted the old one (which was not in use before) in TB key manager.

Then I received an encrypted (with the new public key) mail and wanted to reply (automatically) encrypted to the received mail.

After clicking "send" TB said "There is a problem with encryption because key "123abc..." does not exist, and sending was not possible.

I was confused, scared and annoyed what the problem could be. After some time I figured out out to look in the mail identities openpgp settings, and realised that the deleted key was still "active" associated with the mail identity. Again, I do not see any point in this.
So I just had to select the new key, and the old one just disappeared in void. Then I could reply encrypted.

I would suggest, that when a private key that is currently associated, is deleted, TB

• automatically associates the only other available private key, if there is exactly only one available
• automatically associates the newest of other available private keys, if there are more that one available
• or alternatively, when there are more than one other possible keys, pops up a selection and asks the user which to associate