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Re: Thunderbird + Enigmail + saving draft with encryption

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On Fri, 2019-02-01 at 18:26 +0000, Paul Sutton wrote:
> Hi
> 
> Thunderbird + Enigmail has an option in "account settings" OpenPGP
> Security to save a draft of a message with encryption, as expected
> this
> saves the draft but with a new subject as "Encrypted message" and it
> appears in drafts as this.
> 
> If you save the message,  close the compose window,  then go to
> Drafts, 
> then reopen the message for more editing before sending the subject
> remains as "Encrypted message" and you lose the original subject
> header.
> 
> I just wondered if this is what is meant to happen ? or is the
> original
> subject header supposed to be restored.  Has anyone else noticed this.

I noticed this a few weeks or a month ago and took it to be a somewhat
inelegant, maybe incompletely implemented, feature intended to improve
metadata security. I believe "Encrypted message" also becomes the
subject of the transmitted message. 

Exposure of the  metadata showing who is in contact with whom, and when,
is pretty much inescapable, but the subject line, which is not
encrypted, also can  provide useful information to an eavesdropper, even
if she cannot decrypt the message body. This is noted in some PGP or GPG
documentation I have seen, accompanied by recommendations to obscure the
Subject: line and put the true subject within the body.

Tom Dial
> 
> System information
> 
> Thunderbird 60.4.0 (64-bit)
> 
> Enigmail 2.0.9
> 
> Distributor ID:    Debian
> Description:    Debian GNU/Linux 9.7 (stretch)
> Release:    9.7
> Codename:    stretch
> psutton@zleap:~$
> 
> Linux zleap 4.9.0-8-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 4.9.130-2 (2018-10-27) x86_64
> GNU/Linux
> 
> 
> Paul Sutton
> 
> 
> 
> 

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Thunderbird + Enigmail + saving draft with encryption Paul Sutton <zleap@disroot.org> - 2019-02-01 19:30 +0100
  Re: Thunderbird + Enigmail + saving draft with encryption Étienne Mollier <etienne.mollier@mailoo.org> - 2019-02-01 22:30 +0100
    Re: Thunderbird + Enigmail + saving draft with encryption Paul Sutton <zleap@disroot.org> - 2019-02-01 22:50 +0100
  Re: Thunderbird + Enigmail + saving draft with encryption didier gaumet <didier.gaumet@gmail.com> - 2019-02-02 10:20 +0100
    Re: Thunderbird + Enigmail + saving draft with encryption Paul Sutton <zleap@disroot.org> - 2019-02-02 14:20 +0100
      Re: Thunderbird + Enigmail + saving draft with encryption Paul Sutton <zleap@disroot.org> - 2019-02-02 14:30 +0100
        Re: Thunderbird + Enigmail + saving draft with encryption didier gaumet <didier.gaumet@gmail.com> - 2019-02-03 10:00 +0100
          Re: Thunderbird + Enigmail + saving draft with encryption Étienne Mollier <etienne.mollier@mailoo.org> - 2019-02-03 13:30 +0100
  Re: Thunderbird + Enigmail + saving draft with encryption Thomas D Dial <tdial@acm.org> - 2019-02-02 20:30 +0100
    Re: Thunderbird + Enigmail + saving draft with encryption Cindy-Sue Causey <butterflybytes@gmail.com> - 2019-02-02 21:10 +0100
      Re: Thunderbird + Enigmail + saving draft with encryption Paul Sutton <zleap@disroot.org> - 2019-02-02 21:30 +0100

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