The following delphi codes demonstrate how to verify S/MIME digital signature and decrypt encrypted email.
How to sign email?
Digital signature is always signed by sender certificate. The certificate used to sign email content MUST have the public/private key pair.
First of all, the user MUST get a digital certificate for personal email protection from third-party certificate authorities such as www.verisign.com.
After the certificate is installed on the machine, it can be viewed by Control
Panel
-> Internet Options
-> Content
-> Certificates
-> Personal
.
When you view the certificate, please note there is a line “You have a private key that corresponds
to this certificate” in the certificate view, that means you are able to
use this certificate to sign email content. If this line doesn’t appear, that means
you are unable to sign the email content by this certificate.
To sign email content, please refer to EASendMail SMTP Component.
How to encrypt email?
Encrypting email doesn’t require sender certificate but the certificate with public key for every recipient.
For example: from@adminsystem.com
sends an email to rcpt@adminsystem.com
with digital signature; The digital signature contains the public key certificate for from@adminsystem.com
,
then rcpt@adminsystem.com
can send an encrypted email with this certificate back to from@adminsystem.com
;
Only from@adminsystem
can read this email, because this email MUST be decrypted by private key of from@adminsystem.com
.
Therefore, you MUST receive an digital signed email from other people (Most email clients such as outlook, outlook express will add the certificate to the Other People Storage automatically once an digital signed email is received) before you can send encrypted email to this people.
To encrypt email, please refer to EASendMail SMTP Component.
EAGetMail Mail
class provides an easy way to verify the email digital signature
and get the signer certificate. The signer certificate only contains the public
key, that means you can add this certificate to your user certificate storage so
that you can use this certificate to encrypt email and send the encrypted email
back to the sender, only the sender can decrypt the email.
Sections:
Before you can use the following sample codes, you should download the EAGetMail Installer and install it on your machine at first. Full sample projects are included in this installer.
To better demonstrate how to retrieve email and parse email, let’s create a Delphi Standard EXE project at first, then add a TButton on the Form, double-click this button. It is like this:
To use EAGetMail ActiveX Object in your Delphi project, the first step is “Add Unit file of EAGetMail to your project”. Please go to
C:\Program Files\EAGetMail\Include\delphi
or
C:\Program Files (x86)\EAGetMail\Include\delphi
folder,
find EAGetMailObjLib_TLB.pas
, and then copy this file to your project folder.
// include EAGetMailObjLib_TLB unit to your Delphi Project
unit Unit1;
interface
uses
Windows, Messages, SysUtils, Variants, Classes, Graphics, Controls, Forms,
Dialogs, EAGetMailObjLib_TLB, StdCtrls;
Then you can start to use it in your Delphi Project.
You can also create EAGetMailObjLib_TLB.pas manually by Delphi like this:
Delphi 7 or eariler version
First of all, create a standard delphi project: select menu Project
-> Import Type Library
, checked EAGetMail ActiveX Object
and click Create Unit
.
Then include EAGetMailObjLib_TLB
in your project.
Delphi XE or later version
First of all, create a standard delphi project: select menu Component
-> Import component...
-> Import a type library
-> checked EAGetMail ActiveX Object
,
have Generate Component Wrapper
checked and click “Create Unit”. Then include EAGetMailObjLib_TLB
in your project.
The following example codes demonstrate parsing S/MIME email - digital signature and decryption.
In order to run it correctly, please change email server
, user
, password
, folder
, file name
value to yours.
Note
To get full sample projects, please download and install EAGetMail on your machine.
unit Unit1;
interface
uses
Windows, Messages, SysUtils, Variants, Classes, Graphics, Controls, Forms,
Dialogs, StdCtrls, EAGetMailObjLib_TLB;
type
TForm1 = class(TForm)
Button1: TButton;
procedure Button1Click(Sender: TObject);
private
{ Private declarations }
procedure ParseEmail(fileName: WideString);
public
{ Public declarations }
end;
const
CRYPT_MACHINE_KEYSET = 32;
CRYPT_USER_KEYSET = 4096;
CERT_SYSTEM_STORE_CURRENT_USER = 65536;
CERT_SYSTEM_STORE_LOCAL_MACHINE = 131072;
var
Form1: TForm1;
implementation
{$R *.dfm}
procedure TForm1.ParseEmail(fileName: WideString);
Var
oMail: TMail;
i: Integer;
addrs: IAddressCollection;
addr: IMailAddress;
atts: IAttachmentCollection;
att: IAttachment;
oCert: TCertificate;
oSignerCert: ICertificate;
begin
oMail := TMail.Create(Application);
oMail.LicenseCode := 'TryIt';
oMail.LoadFile(fileName, false);
if oMail.IsEncrypted then
try
// this email is encrypted, decrypt it by default user certificate
oMail.ConnectTo(oMail.Decrypt(nil));
// You can also use specified certificate like this
// oCert := TCertificate.Create(Application);
// oCert.LoadFromFile('c:\test.pfx', 'pfxpassword', CRYPT_USER_KEYSET);
// oMail.Load(oMail.Decrypt(oCert.DefaultInterface).Content);
except
on ep: exception do
ShowMessage('Decrypt Error: ' + ep.Message);
end;
if oMail.IsSigned then
try
// this email is digital signed, verify signature
oSignerCert := oMail.VerifySignature();
ShowMessage('This email contains a valid digital signature.');
// You can add the certificate to your certificate storage like this
// oSignerCert.AddToStore(CERT_SYSTEM_STORE_CURRENT_USER,
// 'addressbook');
// Then you can use send the encrypted email back to this sender.
except
on ep: Exception do
ShowMessage('Verify signature Error: ' + ep.Message);
end;
// Parse email sender
ShowMessage('From: ' + oMail.From.Address);
// Parse email to recipients
addrs := oMail.ToList;
for i := 0 To addrs.Count - 1 do
begin
addr := addrs.Item[i];
ShowMessage('To: ' + addr.Address);
End;
// Parse email cc recipients
addrs := oMail.CcList;
for i := 0 To addrs.Count - 1 do
begin
addr := addrs.Item[i];
ShowMessage('Cc: ' + addr.Address);
end;
// Parse email subject
ShowMessage('Subject: ' + oMail.Subject);
// Parse email text body
ShowMessage('Text body: ' + oMail.TextBody);
// Parse email HTML body
ShowMessage('HTML body: ' + oMail.HtmlBody);
// Parse attachment
atts := oMail.AttachmentList;
for i := 0 To atts.Count - 1 do
begin
att := atts.Item[i];
ShowMessage(att.Name);
end;
end;
procedure TForm1.Button1Click(Sender: TObject);
begin
try
ParseEmail('c:\test folder\test.eml');
except
on ep:Exception do
ShowMessage('Error: ' + ep.Message);
end;
end;
end.
Seperate builds of run-time dll for 32 and x64 platform
File | Platform |
Installation Path\Lib\native\x86\EAGetMailObj.dll | 32 bit |
Installation Path\Lib\native\x64\EAGetMailObj.dll | 64 bit |
Standard EXE
For VB6, C++, Delphi or other standard exe application, you can distribute EAGetMailObj.dll with your application to target machine without COM-registration and installer. To learn more detail, please have a look at Registration-free COM with Manifest File.
Script
For ASP, VBScript, VBA, MS SQL Stored Procedure, you need to install EAGetMail on target machine by EAGetMail installer, both 32bit/x64 DLL are installed and registered.
Appendix
Comments
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