1863018 - Need UI in message viewer to allow user discovery of optional, security-related message attributes

Status: NEW

(MailNews Core :: Security: OpenPGP, enhancement)

Description

[Kai Engert [:KaiE:]]

This is a UI enhancement request in the context of digitally signed or encrypted emails.

In an ideal scenario, if a message is encrypted and can be decrypted, or is digitally signed and it can be validated as being correct, our UI already shows indicators for the status of the message.

(We display icons that mean "is encrypted" or "is digitally signed", and we display a label (either OpenPGP or S/MIME) that indicates the security technology that was used with the message.)

We need handling for the non-ideal scenarios.

A message may contain nested encrypted elements. To protect the user from attacks (I can explain if desired), we don't automatically decrypt/show encrypted sub-elements of a message. Rather, we inform the user such sub-elements are present, and allow the user to request their display. (Which will then be shown in one or multiple, separate message windows.)

Currently this is notified using a notification bar, and the user can click a button to request showing.

Similarly, a message may contain a digital signature in a nested layer. A common example is a message that was routed through a mailing list. Mailing lists often add an outer wrapper layer to the message, to add a footer with mailing list information.

Because after this manipulation the complete message isn't digitally signed altogether, we don't treat the message as digitally signed, and don't show its status at all.

However, it can be useful to make the user aware such status is available. It should be discoverable. This is being worked on in bug 1861703, which initially also suggests to use a notification.

Another scenario is bug 1836262, which suggests to hide primary status indicators for messages with an incorrect digital signature. Nevertheless, it will be necessary to provide debug information for such message, and I think it should also be discoverable such additional information is available.

This bug suggests to design and implement a UI mechanism for this kind of feedback, which could potentially replace (some) of today's uses of notification bars, when additional information is available.