Enigmail

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Enigmail

Enigmail Logo.png
SignedAndEncryptedMessage.png
Signed and encrypted message with Mozilla Thunderbird and Enigmail
Basic data

Maintainer Patrick Brunschwig
Publishing year November 30, 2009
Current  version 2.1.6
( March 28, 2020 )
operating system cross-platform
programming language JavaScript , Python
category Extension for SeaMonkey and Thunderbird
License GPL , MPL
German speaking Yes
www.enigmail.net

Enigmail (composed of the words Enigma and E-Mail ) is an extension for Mozilla Thunderbird and the MailNews component of SeaMonkey for signing and encrypting electronic messages and attached files using the OpenPGP standard. It fits seamlessly into the graphical user interface of these programs.

The cryptographic functions (encrypt, decrypt, sign and verify) are not carried out by the module itself, but are transferred to the GnuPG software in the background . GnuPG must also be installed on the system. In addition to the operations performed by GnuPG, Enigmail can also perform some OpenPGP functions itself, such as searching for missing keys . Enigmail supports both PGP / INLINE (according to RFC 2440 ) and PGP / MIME (according to RFC 3156 ).

In addition to OpenPGP, there is another standard for signing and encrypting emails, namely S / MIME . Mozilla already offers native support for this, so Thunderbird does not need any additional extensions.

In September 2015, Patrick Brunschwig (project manager of Enigmail) and Volker Birk (chief developer of p≡p) announced that Enigmail and the Swiss "p≡p" ( Pretty Easy privacy ) foundation were working on a joint project called "Enigmail / p ≡p "work. The aim of "Enigmail / p≡p" should be the (fully) automatic encryption of e-mails without user intervention while at the same time being compatible with OpenPGP and S / MIME as well as simple integration into existing infrastructure such as Thunderbird.

Enigmail 1.9 was released in February 2016. In addition to numerous bug fixes, messages are now sent in PGP / MIME encoding by default. GnuPG 2.1 is used by default; GnuPG 1.4.x is no longer supported. In this version "Protected Headers" were also introduced; however, the feature is still deactivated by default.

On October 8, 2019, the Thunderbird developers announced that the encryption and signing functions with OpenPGP, which were previously provided by the extension, are expected to be integrated directly into Thunderbird by summer 2020. Patrick Brunschwig offered his help with the implementation. The background to this step is that with the release of version 78 of Thunderbird, the previous extensions will no longer be compatible. Enigmail is thus replaced by its functionality through native support. This should be done in version 78.2.

Vulnerabilities

In mid-August 2014, a bug was discovered in Enigmail 1.7.0, which caused a message to be sent unencrypted if all recipients are in the BCC . This was remedied by the 1.7.2 release.

Up to version 2.0.4, Enigmail was susceptible to efail , which means that with activated HTML e-mails and reloading external content, the decrypted text could be sent to an attacker under certain circumstances.

Web links

Commons : Enigmail  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ enigmail.net .
  2. ↑ a b openhub.net . (accessed November 16, 2015).
  3. ↑ Enigmail and p≡p jointly develop Enigmail / p≡p. In: pep.foundation. September 7, 2015, accessed February 24, 2016 .
  4. ↑ Enigmail changelog. Enigmail 1.9. In: enigmail.net. February 24, 2016, accessed February 24, 2016 .
  5. ↑ Ryan Sipes: Thunderbird, Enigmail and OpenPGP. In: blog.mozilla.org. Mozilla October 8, 2019; archived from the original on October 8, 2019 ; accessed on October 8, 2019 .
  6. ↑ Ryan Sipes: What's New in Thunderbird 78. In: blog.mozilla.org. Mozilla, July 16, 2020, accessed July 30, 2020 .
  7. ↑ Enigmail / Bugs. # 294 Not encrypting with Bcc recipients. In: sourceforge.net. July 27, 2014, accessed February 24, 2016 .
  8. ↑ 2014 and earlier. Archived news. In: enigmail.net. August 29, 2014, accessed February 24, 2016 .
  9. ↑ Enigmail / Bugs / Search. In: sourceforge.net. Retrieved May 20, 2018 .