New program to integrate encryption/signing with mail/news

[Stuart Smith]

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I have written a new program to help integrate encryption and
signature programs such as (but not limited to) PGP.  This is
the doc file that is included.  I am going to try to upload it
to ftp.csua.berkeley.edu, the cypherpunks ftp site, in directory
/pub/cypherpunks/incoming.  The file name is mess11.zip.  Not
sure where it will end up, but if you can't find it or don't
have ftp, I will gladly mail it to you.

This is the first program of any sort, simple though it is, that
I have ever unleashed on the public at large, comments are
greatly appreciated - please be gentle :)

I'm biased of course, but I find it a rather elegant (ergonomic
is what I want to say :) way to let users encrypt or sign
messages.  Please give it a try, it is freeware and may be
distributed under the GNU Public License.


mess - automagic Mail Encryption and Signing System for mail & news

Copyright 1994 Stuart Smith
May be distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License.


This program is meant to be run in lieu of an editor from a mail or news
program.  The editor you want to use should be the first argument on
the command line.  The article or message to be edited should be the second.

mess first starts the editor with the specified file.  If you want your
message to be encrypted or signed, place one or more of the following strings
at the beginning of a line.  (i.e. each string must start at the beginning of
its own line)

 [encrypt]
 [encrypt] <key_ID>
 [sign]
 [sign] <key_ID>

Only the first encrypt or sign string will be acted on and removed from the
text.  Further copies are ignored.  If you add a space and a key ID,
these will be added to the PGP command line so that PGP will not ask
you for them.  A key ID (any text fragment unique to a public key
description) is considered as everything from one space after 
the [encrypt]/[sign] string.

mess now also scans headers, if they are included, for To: or From: headers
and will use these as key_ID's.  If you specify a key_ID after [sign] or
 [encrypt], it will override the key_ID found in the headers.  I use trn,
which does pass headers to the editor and it seems to work great.  Elm
doesn't though so I can't test it, but I assume it would work as well.  I
had to try and make the program smart enough to figure out if there even
are headers.  To do this, it first splits the file in two at the first blank
line.  Everything above is considered header lines.  If however, it does not
match From:, To:, or Subject:, then it assumes that headers were not in fact
included in the file and that it is really just parsing the first paragraph. 
In which case it throws it out and just uses the whole file as the body,
with no headers.

If a public or secret key is not found matching the key_ID found in the
header or entered manually, PGP will fail, leaving your message intact,
including the [encrypt]/[sign] strings, if present.

I've tried not to emphasize PGP to much because I wrote the program so
that it could be used with any encryption program. PGP is of course a
natural for the job.  Right now, the defaults for the encrypt and sign
strings, encrypt and sign options, and even the encryption program to call
are in #define statements, so they're pretty easy to change.  In the
future I might add a configuration file for such things or allow them
to be specified on the command-line.

Ideas I have for the near future include somewhat better help for wrong
command-line args and such;  configuration file for some default or more
command-line options;  allow mailers or news readers that will do this to
pass sender & recipient information on the command line;  less moving
around of temp files - right now the plaintext of a message gets copied
into a temporary file before going to pgp, and while *that* temporary file
is wiped by pgp, the original file is only deleted.  I will try and
organize things better or perhaps if someone can point me to a portable
file wipe?

The executable included runs under OS/2 with the emx runtime package.
I've tried to avoid doing anything platform specific (I use OS/2),
if I messed up, let me know.

I have tested the program using Elm for OS/2 and TRN for OS/2 which I use
to read mail and news from the UUPC v1.2b program.  I got the idea for
the [encrypt] and [sign] bit from Elm_2 for OS/2 which had something
similar, but I tried to improve on it.  I would like to hear from people
using this on other computers or with other mail/news programs.  If you have
any suggestions, please forward them, thanks.

I hope you find this useful, I'd appreciate any comments & ideas.
<Stu at nemesis.wimsey.com>

- -- 
 Baba baby mama shaggy papa baba bro baba rock a shaggy baba sister
shag saggy hey doc baba baby shaggy hey baba can you dig it baba baba
        E7 E3 90 7E 16 2E F3 45   *   28 24 2E C6 03 02 37 5C 
   Stuart Smith                           <stu at nemesis.wimsey.com>

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