VB6 - Sign email - S/MIME¶

The following vb example codes demonstrate how to sign email to S/MIME format with digital signature.

Email Digital Signature

Digital signature prevents email content is faked or changed in transport level. Encrypting email protects email content from exposure to inappropriate recipients. Both digital signature and email encrypting depend on digital certificate.

If you have an email digital signature certificate installed on your machine, you can find it in “Control Panel” -> “Internet Options” -> “Content” -> “Certificates” -> “Personal”.

Then you can use your email certificate to sign the email by the following code. If you don’t have a certificate for your email address, you MUST get a digital certificate for personal email protection from third-party certificate authorities such as www.verisign.com.

If you need a free certificate for your email address, you can go to http://www.comodo.com/home/email-security/free-email-certificate.php to apply for one year free email certificate.

Sections:

Installation
Add reference in VB6
Add reference in VBA (EXCEL/Access/Outlook)
VB6 - Sign email - S/MIME - example
Signature algorithm
TLS 1.2 protocol
32bit/x64 ActiveX DLL
Distribution

Installation¶

EASendMail is a SMTP component which supports all operations of SMTP/ESMTP protocols (RFC 821, RFC 822, RFC 2554). Before you can use the following example codes, you should download the EASendMail Installer and install it on your machine at first.

Add reference in VB6¶

To use EASendMail SMTP ActiveX Object in your project, the first step is “Add reference of EASendMail to your project”. Please select menu -> Project -> References -> and select EASendMailObj ActiveX Object, click OK, the reference will be added to current project, and you can start to use it to send email in your VB6 project.

Add reference in VBA (EXCEL/Access/Outlook)¶

Open VBA IDE by press Alt+F11, Please select menu -> Tools -> References -> and select EASendMailObj ActiveX Object, click OK, the reference will be added to current VBA project, and you can start to use it to send email in your VBA project.

VB6 - Sign email - S/MIME - example¶

The following example codes demonstrate signing email with digital signature - S/MIME. In order to run it correctly, please change SMTP server, user, password, sender, recipient value to yours.

Note

To get full sample projects, please download and install EASendMail on your machine.

Const CRYPT_MACHINE_KEYSET = 32
Const CRYPT_USER_KEYSET = 4096
Const CERT_SYSTEM_STORE_CURRENT_USER = 65536
Const CERT_SYSTEM_STORE_LOCAL_MACHINE = 131072

Const ConnectNormal = 0
Const ConnectSSLAuto = 1
Const ConnectSTARTTLS = 2
Const ConnectDirectSSL = 3
Const ConnectTryTLS = 4

Private Sub btnSendMail_Click()

    Dim oSmtp As New EASendMailObjLib.Mail
    oSmtp.LicenseCode = "TryIt"

    ' Set your sender email address
    oSmtp.FromAddr = "test@emailarchitect.net"

    ' Add recipient email address
    oSmtp.AddRecipientEx "support@emailarchitect.net", 0

    ' Set email subject
    oSmtp.Subject = "test email from VB 6.0 with digital signature"

    ' Set email body
    oSmtp.BodyText = "this is a test email sent from VB 6.0 with digital signature"

    ' Add digital signature
    If Not oSmtp.SignerCert.FindSubject("test@emailarchitect.net", _
        CERT_SYSTEM_STORE_CURRENT_USER, "my") Then
        MsgBox oSmtp.SignerCert.GetLastError()
        Exit Sub
    End If

    If Not oSmtp.SignerCert.HasPrivateKey Then
        MsgBox "Signer certificate has not private key, " & _
            " this certificate can not be used to sign email!"
        Exit Sub
    End If

    ' Your SMTP server address
    oSmtp.ServerAddr = "smtp.emailarchitect.net"

    ' User and password for ESMTP authentication, if your server doesn't require
    ' User authentication, please remove the following codes.
    oSmtp.UserName = "test@emailarchitect.net"
    oSmtp.Password = "testpassword"

   ' ConnectTryTLS means if server supports SSL/TLS connection, SSL/TLS is used automatically
    oSmtp.ConnectType = ConnectTryTLS

    ' If your server uses 587 port
    ' oSmtp.ServerPort = 587

    ' If your server uses 25/587/465 port with SSL/TLS
    ' oSmtp.ConnectType = ConnectSSLAuto
    ' oSmtp.ServerPort = 25 ' 25 or 587 or 465

    MsgBox "start to send email ..."

    If oSmtp.SendMail() = 0 Then
        MsgBox "email was sent successfully!"
    Else
        MsgBox "failed to send email with the following error:" & oSmtp.GetLastErrDescription()
    End If

End Sub

Signature algorithm¶

You can use SignatureHashAlgorithm property to set MD5, SHA1, SHA256, SHA384 or SHA512 signature algorithm. SHA256 is recommended.

RSASSA-PSS Signature

If you need to use RSASSA-PSS signature scheme, you need a special version of EASendMail, please have a look at this topic:

RSASSA-PSS + RSA-OAEP Encryption with SHA256

TLS 1.2 protocol¶

TLS is the successor of SSL, more and more SMTP servers require TLS 1.2 encryption now.

If your operating system is Windows XP/Vista/Windows 7/Windows 2003/2008/2008 R2/2012/2012 R2, you need to enable TLS 1.2 protocol in your operating system like this:

Enable TLS 1.2 on Windows XP/Vista/7/10/Windows 2008/2008 R2/2012

32bit/x64 ActiveX DLL¶

Seperate builds of run-time dll for 32 and x64 platform

File	Platform
Installation Path\Lib\native\x86\EASendMailObj.dll	32 bit
Installation Path\Lib\native\x64\EASendMailObj.dll	64 bit

Distribution¶

Standard EXE

For VB6, C++, Delphi or other standard exe application, you can distribute EASendMailObj.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 EASendMail on target machine by EASendMail installer, both 32bit/x64 DLL are installed and registered.

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