S/MIME Email Encryption#
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Prerequisites#
There are two widely used standards for email encryption.
OpenPGP/GnuPG is popular among individuals,
S/MIME/X.509 is mostly used by enterprises.
If you are in doubt which one to choose, you should use OpenPGP, see here (not applicable for the Nitrokey HSM 2, the Nitrokey HSM 2 currently supports the S/MIME/X.509 standard though, therefore the rest of the guide is applicable for the HSM 2 and other Nitrokeys). This page describes the usage of S/MIME email encryption.
You need to purchase a S/MIME certificate (e.g. at CERTUM) or may already got one by your company. Furthermore, you need to install OpenSC on your System. While GNU/Linux users usually can install OpenSC over the package manager (e.g. sudo apt install opensc on Ubuntu), macOS and Windows users can download the installation files from the OpenSC page.
Note
Windows users with 64-bit system (standard) need to install both, the 32-bit and the 64-bit version of OpenSC!
Import Existing Key and Certificate#
The following instructions are based on the wiki of OpenSC. We will assume, that you already got a key-certificate pair as a .p12 file. Please have a look at the wiki page, if you got a separate key and certificate file.
To open the Windows command line please push the Windows-key and R-key. Now type ‘cmd.exe’ in the text field and hit enter. To open a Terminal on macOS or GNU/Linux please use the application search (e.g. spotlight on macOS).
To make these commands as simple as possible, the .p12 file needs to be in your home folder. On Windows this is usually C:\Users\yourusername and on macOS and GNU/Linux system it will be /home/yourusername. If you do not store the .p12 file there, you have to adapt the path in the commands below. Please plug in the Nitrokey before submitting the commands.
Assuming that your key-certificate file reads ‘myprivate.p12’ the commands for Windows looks like this:
"C:\Program Files\OpenSC Project\OpenSC\tools\pkcs15-init" --delete-objects privkey,pubkey --id 3 --store-private-key myprivate.p12 --format pkcs12 --auth-id 3 --verify-pin
"C:\Program Files\OpenSC Project\OpenSC\tools\pkcs15-init" --delete-objects privkey,pubkey --id 2 --store-private-key myprivate.p12 --format pkcs12 --auth-id 3 --verify-pin
and on macOS and GNU/Linux it will be
$ pkcs15-init --delete-objects privkey,pubkey --id 3 --store-private-key myprivate.p12 --format pkcs12 --auth-id 3 --verify-pin
$ pkcs15-init --delete-objects privkey,pubkey --id 2 --store-private-key myprivate.p12 --format pkcs12 --auth-id 3 --verify-pin
The two commands copy the key-certificate pair to the slot 2 (needed for decrypting emails) and slot 3 (needed for signing). The output looks on both systems something like this:
Please note that there will be error messages that can be safely ignored (see output example above). You now have the key-certificate pair loaded on the Nitrokey.
Usage#
You can find further information about the usage on these pages: