Reading Secure Email signed with Certificates

[macphylum]

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Processor: Power PC
Email Client: Exchange

My system takes so incredibly long to open signed emails. Even when I add the sender's certificates to my address book, it does not solve the long delay problem when opening other emails from the same sender. Is their a patch or something for this, the delay is terribly long.

 

[William Smith [MVP]]

My system takes so incredibly long to open signed emails. Even when I
add the sender's certificates to my address book, it does not solve
the long delay problem when opening other emails from the same
sender. Is their a patch or something for this, the delay is terribly
long.

This sounds more likely a problem with Entourage trying to verify the
sender's certificate with the certificate authority.

If you click on the View Details link at the top of a signed message, do
you see all green check marks or do you see any problems?

Under the Details tab of this same window is a button you can click to
check revocation status. Does clicking that button immediately return
"The digital ID has not been revoked" or does this also take a while work?

--

bill

Entourage Help Page <http://entourage.mvps.org/>
Entourage Help Blog <http://blog.entourage.mvps.org/>
YouTalk <http://nine.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/youtalk>
Twitter: follow <http://twitter.com/meck>

 

[macphylum]

I checked the revocation status and it can not determine the status. The Security Details for the signed message are as follows:

Green: Message has not been tampered with
Red: You do not trust the signing digital ID
Green: The digital ID has not expired
Green: The digital ID's email address does not match senders
Green: Revocation information for this certificate could not be determined

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

 

[William Smith [MVP]]

I checked the revocation status and it can not determine the status.
The Security Details for the signed message are as follows:

Green: Message has not been tampered with Red: You do not trust the
signing digital ID Green: The digital ID has not expired Green: The
digital ID's email address does not match senders Green: Revocation
information for this certificate could not be determined

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

That's about what I suspected. Entourage is unable to contact the
authority that signed the certificate to determine if the certificate
has been revoked. The delay is due to waiting for a response and finally
timing out.

If this is an internally signed certificate then contact your
certificate authority administrator and report this problem to him.

If this is an externally signed certificate then let the sender know to
contact his certificate provider. He may have also generated the
certificate himself. In that case you can't connect to his signing
authority and should ask that he not sign his messages.

If you're using a laptop then move to a different network (either try
again from home or a coffee shop) to make sure you're connection to the
certificate authority is not getting blocked.

Hope this helps!

--

bill

Entourage Help Page <http://entourage.mvps.org/>
Entourage Help Blog <http://blog.entourage.mvps.org/>
YouTalk <http://nine.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/youtalk>
Twitter: follow <http://twitter.com/meck>