[Announce] Autocrypt support for Balsa

Albrecht Dreß <[email protected]> Sat, 29 Dec 2018 13:52:27 +0100
Newsgroups	gmane.comp.gnome.apps.balsa
Message-ID	<[email protected]>
Hi all,

on behalf of the whole development team I would like to announce the initial implementation of Autocrypt support for the MUA Balsa [1].  It has not yet been tested thoroughly, and thus is available only from the “autocrypt” gitlab branch [2] for the time being.

The following features are included (see [3] for a more detailed description):

(1) Identity Management
Balsa supports OpenPGP and S/MIME cryptography since more than a decade, including separate preferences for each identity.  They have been extended for Autocrypt.

(2) Receiving Messages
* evaluation of the Autocrypt header as required by the standard (exceptions: multipart/report, text/calendar [4]);
* data extracted is stored in a database, but /not/ automatically in the gpg key ring (see below);
* user can manually import a key from the Autocrypt database if it is missing in the key ring, e.g. for checking a signature.

(3) Sending Messages
* include the Autocrypt header if requested for the identity (exceptions: multipart/report, text/calendar [4]);
* provide the “educated guess” for encryption if requested (skipped for S/MIME or if the user already activated encryption);
* Balsa since a long time recommends encryption if the public keys for all recipients are available in the key ring.  As to keep this behaviour, keys which are in the key ring but /not/ in the Autocrypt database are treated as “prefer-encrypt=mutual” (note: the Autocrypt status takes precedence);
* if necessary, keys are automatically imported from the Autocrypt database into the key ring.

(4) Miscellaneous
A small GUI for viewing the Autocrypt database, without more functionality (yet).

The following features are *not* implemented:
* key gossip
* secret key management (use gpa, seahorse, …)
* setup messages

As always, testing and any feedback from the community will be highly appreciated!

All the best for a happy and peaceful new year,
Albrecht.


[1] <https://pawsa.fedorapeople.org/balsa/>
[2] <https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/balsa/tree/autocrypt>
[3] <https://mail.gnome.org/archives/balsa-list/2018-December/msg00020.html>
[4] <https://github.com/autocrypt/autocrypt/issues/396>

_______________________________________________
balsa-list mailing list
[email protected]
https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/balsa-list
signature.asc (application/pgp-signature, 488 B)