263761 - Support (virus/spam) scanning of encrypted messages (both SSL and SMIME/GPG)

Status: RESOLVED INACTIVE

(Thunderbird :: General, enhancement)

Description

[Ralf Hauser]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8a5) Gecko/20041008
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8a5) Gecko/20041008

Standard virus-filters have troubles with encrypted mail (Bug 259412).
Both for SSL protected up- and downloads with ISPs as well as if the message
body is encrypted by SMIME or GPG.

I think it is a legitimate desire of end-users to also have their encrypted
traffic scanned as well in an easy way. This means, not by hand starting the
scanner, but being supported by the MUA.

As far as my understanding goes, most scanners also have a command-line /
batchable version of their program.

Therefore, one could in the MUA configure which exe to use and the MUA would in
the decryption-process run that exe over the mail body/attachments and
subsequently wipe it again (e.g like the old pgp wipe).

Alternative architectures might reach the same effect:
- forward all mail to a listener on localhost:25 or localhost:110 that sends
them to /dev/null ?
- ...

Conclusion, mozilla should not leave its users to the mercy of what the
commercial scan software providers decide for them, but support them from inside
in achieving an optimum mail scanning security.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.
2.
3.

Comment 1

[Ralf Hauser]

if providers start to implement very inconvenient features as NAV2005 described
in Bug 259412, it might even be desirable to have such a functionality not just
for encrypted mail, but for all mail.

Comment 2

[Ralf Hauser]

see also Bug 135201

Comment 3

[Ralf Hauser]

see also Bug 267503

Comment 4

[Ralf Hauser]

leverage this configured scanner also for the download dialog of the browser
(Bug 271881)

Comment 5

[Ralf Hauser]

see also Bug 103487 and http://issues.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=27193
for APIs

Comment 6

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This is an automated message, with ID "auto-resolve01".

This bug has had no comments for a long time. Statistically, we have found that
bug reports that have not been confirmed by a second user after three months are
highly unlikely to be the source of a fix to the code.

While your input is very important to us, our resources are limited and so we
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Comment 7

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This bug has been automatically resolved after a period of inactivity (see above
comment). If anyone thinks this is incorrect, they should feel free to reopen it.

Comment 8

[linuxmodder]

Motioning for a full closed status  no comments in 6  years

Comment 9

[Matt]

I am closing this as time and change have largely made the SSL/TLS component obsolete.

What happens with encrypted message sound be refiled as a new enhancement if anyone thinks it is a valuable result. But I would have thought that the option to allow anti-virus programs to scan mails would have decrypted the message before writing it to the temp folder.