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How email sent with S/MIME are stored?

Information Security Asked by Blafarus on December 12, 2021

I use Outlook to send email. In order to encrypt them, I use S/MIME with a signed certificate. I don’t find the answer on how the storage of the email I send is performed.

First option as I am the expeditor, the email is stored in clear on my computer.
Second, I create an encrypted version of the email for me and I stored the email encrypted.

Do you have an idea ?

One Answer

The email is encrypted for both, the recipient as well as the sender. So the same email can be read by either the recipient or the sender.

In more detail, S/MIME (just like PGP) encrypts the email with a symmetric cipher using a random key, then that key gets encrypted using a asymmetric cipher using the public key of all recipients as well as the sender. These encrypted keys are then stored as part as the email.

This is true for any email app, not only Outlook.

Answered by not2savvy on December 12, 2021

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