GNU Emacs: GnuPG, DefaultEncrypt, ExtendSMIME
I’m using GNU Emacs for almost everything related to text processing. In particular, for e-mail and news I’m using Gnus.
GNU Emacs comes with built-in support for
GnuPG, e.g., via the EasyPG
Assistant, which is
able to en- and decrypt files with the extension .gpg transparently if
you put the following into your ~/.emacs:
(require 'epa-file)
(setq epa-file-encrypt-to "<your keyid>")
Moreover, Gnus supports
GnuPG
via the insertion of so-called MML secure tags, which contain encryption
instructions to be performed before a message is sent. However, in the
past I sent plaintext e-mails (more than once, I’m afraid) that really
should have been encrypted ones. To prevent myself from forgetting to
encrypt e-mails again, I wrote
DefaultEncrypt, provided
by file jl-encrypt.el.
DefaultEncrypt aims for automatic insertion of MML secure tags into messages if public keys (either OpenPGP public keys or S/MIME certificates) for all recipients are available. In addition, before a message is sent, the user is asked if plaintext should really be sent unencryptedly when public keys for all recipients are available.
In general, I recommend OpenPGP via GnuPG over
S/MIME
(which is the default for Gnus). If you are really interested in S/MIME
then I suggest that you take a look at file ExtendSMIME (file jl-smime.el).
My signed versions are available here:
- For Emacs versions up to 24.x.
- For Emacs versions starting with 25.1.
