On Mon, 26 Nov 2018 09:48, patr...@enigmail.net said:

> its focus. In other words, Enigmail does not ask you for your passphrase
> - that's fully controlled by GnuPG.

Not really.  For security reasons Windows has strict rules on which
process can put itself into the focus.  Enigmail needs to tell Pinentry,
via gpg, that it may take the focus and request input.  This is
implemented by a callback mechanism all the way from Pinentry, via
gpg-agent and gpg up to the calling process (Thunderbird here).

In the case of Enigmail, it needs to call AllowSetForegroundWindow with
the process handle of the just created gpg process.  In turn, gpg
detects the Pinentry launch and calls AllowSetForegroundWindow on the
Process handle of the started Pinentry.  Only then then Pinentry may
display itself.  Further, when calling AllowSetForegroundWindow the
process must have its Window already in the foregorund.

Sometimes other Windows get in the way and even a correct implemented
AllowSetForegroundWindow chain will not work.  As per Windows security
architecture, the Pinentry will announce itself in the taskbar.

I would recommend to increase the passphrase caching time so
that the Pinentry dialog is not required too often.  Usually there is
not much security gain by always entering the passphrase: Any attacking
malware will first install a keylogger and can thus grab the passphrase
in any case.


Shalom-Salam,

   Werner

-- 
Die Gedanken sind frei.  Ausnahmen regelt ein Bundesgesetz.

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