Usage¶
Monkeysign comes in two different interfaces: a commandline interface named monkeysign and a graphical interface named monkeyscan.
Monkeysign creates a temporary keyring to sign keys, and then encrypts and sends the signature by email to the owner of the key. This makes possible to verify that the holder of the private key (used to decrypt the signature) has also access to the mailbox mentioned in the key.
Note
Make sure you have your email credentials in hand and read the Sending signed key material section before starting, as Monkeysign may not know, by default, how to send email.
Tip
If you have problems using Monkeysign, please do report issues and bugs about it, it’s a great way of contributing! We also welcome documentation, translation and patches, see Contribute for more information.
Monkeysign¶
The commandline interface should provide you with a complete help file
when called with --help
:
monkeysign --help
For example, to sign the Monkeysign test key:
monkeysign 3F94 240C 918E 6359 0B04 152E 86E4 E70A 96F4 7C6A
This will fetch the key from your keyring (or a keyserver) and sign it in a temporary keyring, then encrypt the signature and send it in an email to the owner of the key. Emails can be sent in different ways, documented in Sending signed key material.
If the wrong secret key is chosen to sign the key, you can override it
with the --user
option.
Caution
It is important to use Monkeysign with the fingerprint, and not with the key id, specially when using it through the Tor network, as a key id can be duplicated easily, unlike fingerprints.
Monkeyscan¶
The graphical interface (GUI) should be self-explanatory, it should be in your regular application menus, or you can call start it form the commandline with:
monkeyscan
The GUI will show you a bar code representing the fingerprint
of what Monkeysign thinks is your primary key. You can change that in
the Identity menu, or by customizing the default-key
parameter
in your gpg.conf
file.
On the left side, you should see the output of your camera. You can change cameras (if you have more than one) in the Video device menu, where you can also turn off the camera altogether.
To exchange fingerprints, you should point the camera at another user’s bar code. Monkeysign will detect that user’s key fingerprint, fetch the key over the network from keyservers, then ask you for confirmation before signing and sending the email, just like the command line interface. See Sending signed key material for more information about how email is sent in Monkeysign in general.
There is a very crude preferences window available in the Edit menu. There is work underway to improve it (see 0xACAB issue #41), but it should allow you to create a configuration file with your personal settings. See Configuration files for more information about this as well.
Sending signed key material¶
Monkeysign will attempt to send the signed key by email, unless the
--no-mail
argument is specified. In this case, the encrypted key
material is shown on the terminal and can then be copy-pasted in the
medium of your choice. This is useful, for example, if you use a
web email client like Roundcube, Google Mail or similar.
Monkeysign supports many ways of sending emails:
- Using the system email software (MTA) (e.g. sendmail or Postfix)
- Using your normal email client (MUA) (e.g. Thunderbird or Mutt)
- Using SMTP (e.g. connecting directly to your provider)
Also note that the --tor
option affects how email will be sent,
but only when using the SMTP method, as Monkeysign has no way to
handle how your MUA or MTA will talk to the network.
Using the system email software (MTA)¶
Monkeysign, by default, assumes you have a local MTA installed
as sendmail
. If it is not, you can specify the path to a
sendmail
compatible program with the --mta
option. Such a
program should accept the complete message on standard input, and the
recipient is passed on the commandline in place of the %(to)s
argument.
Note that it is uncommon for workstations and laptops to have a working MTA installed: this is more commonly done on servers, and unless you know what you are doing, you are more likely to want to talk to your existing email client, your MUA.
Using your normal email client (MUA)¶
Therefore, to properly send email on your workstation, you may need to
tell Monkeysign how to use your regular email client, your
MUA. For this, you can use the --mua
option.
By default, Monkeysign will try to figure out your default email
client when you use the --mua
flag is used without argument. This
will in turn call the xdg-email
command which automatically uses
your configured email client correctly:
monkeysign --mua [...]
Your default mail client can be modified in your desktop environment
control panel, or with the xdg-mime
command, for example this will
set Thunderbird as your default email client:
xdg-mime default thunderbird.desktop x-scheme-handler/mailto
You can also specify your own email client on the fly. Here are few examples of known working configurations.
Thunderbird:
monkeysign --mua "thunderbird -compose to=%(to)s,subject=%(subject)s,body=%(body)s,attachment=%(attach)s" [...]
Mutt:
monkeysign --mua "mutt -a %(attach)s -s %(subject)s -i %(body)s %(to)s" [...]
Finally, note that you need to confirm when you are finished writing the actual email. This is because we cannot tell when the email is sent, because a lot of software (especially Thunderbird) return before the email is sent, see Debian BTS #677430 for more information about this issue.
Note
Essentially, the difference between --mta
and --mua
is that the complete message is piped through the
MTA command whereas it is passed as an argument on
the commandline for MUA commands. Also, the
--mta
command expands only the %(to)s
parameter,
whereas the --mua
command expands %(attach)s
,
%(subject)s
, %(body)s
and %(to)s
.
Note that when a --mua
is used, only the key material is
encrypted: the body of the email is sent in the clear. This
is because Monkeysign cannot control how the attachment
layout in the MUA in a standard way.
Furthermore, it may be more difficult for the end-user to
import the key when it was sent with a MUA, as the
recipient’s own MUA may not know how to both decrypt
and import the key at the same time. The MTA
method doesn’t have this problem because of MIME
encapsulation. See also 0xACAB issue #7 for a broader technical
discussion about the --mua
implementation.
Using SMTP¶
Note that you can also send email using your provider’s SMTP server directly, turning Monkeysign into a MUA itself. For example:
monkeysign --smtp=mail.example.com:587 --smtpuser=john [fingerprint of OpenPGP key to sign]
In the above, Monkeysign will attempt to connect to the
mail.example.com
SMTP server over the submission port (587
),
attempt to upgrade the connection securely (using STARTTLS
) and
use the john username. Password will be prompted securely.
Tip
To use a raw TLS
connection, you can also use the
--tls
flag.
Tip
You can also try to deliver email over Tor network with the --tor
option. Be be aware that a lot of email providers block Tor
exit nodes for spam control. You may need to use your
provider’s hidden service to workaround those issues. Ask
your email provider for Tor support if you have problems with
the SMTP method.
Configuration files¶
Monkeysign will read /etc/monkeysign.conf
and
~/.config/monkeysign.conf
(in that order) for configuration
options. Each option can be specified on its own line. Lines starting
with the pound sign (#
) are ignored as comments. A configuration
file can be generated with the --save
option, or through the
preferences window in the GUI. Here is a sample configuration file:
# use my SMTP server to send email
smtpserver=smtp.example.com:587
# this is my username, password is securely prompted interactively
smtpuser=john
# be more verbose
verbose
As you can see, flags like --verbose
are simply specified on their
own, while options with arguments need to be seperated with an equal
(=
) sign.