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Thunderbird blocks / long delay when displaying end-to-end encrypted email

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  • Last reply by bpkasper

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In both my Inbox and my saved email folders, when I click on an end-to-end encrypted email, Thunderbird (v145) displays "Loading Message..." and then blocks with a spinning blue "working" cursor for on the order of 30-60 seconds. The Thunderbird dialog then appears to make some progress, as the windows seems to "flash" as if it's being cleared, but the email content doesn't appear. After about another 20-30 seconds, the encrypted email contents appear, correctly decrypted.

This long delay only occurs when I click on encrypted email messages, and it happens every time I click on an encrypted email message, and this behavior only started occurring in the past couple of days (correlated, I believe with Thunderbird updating to v145) so I think it's safe to assume the issue is with end-to-end encryption/decryption in Thunderbird v145.

In both my Inbox and my saved email folders, when I click on an end-to-end encrypted email, Thunderbird (v145) displays "Loading Message..." and then blocks with a spinning blue "working" cursor for on the order of 30-60 seconds. The Thunderbird dialog then appears to make some progress, as the windows seems to "flash" as if it's being cleared, but the email content doesn't appear. After about another 20-30 seconds, the encrypted email contents appear, correctly decrypted. This long delay only occurs when I click on encrypted email messages, and it happens every time I click on an encrypted email message, and this behavior only started occurring in the past couple of days (correlated, I believe with Thunderbird updating to v145) so I think it's safe to assume the issue is with end-to-end encryption/decryption in Thunderbird v145.

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Here's the Error Console log for a blocking decryption session:

09:57:37.945 openpgp: Starting decryption: imap-message://bpkasper%40gmail.com@imap.gmail.com/_Logins#748 mimeDecrypt.sys.mjs:440:16

09:58:18.625 openpgp: Decryption mode=cfb-mdc, cipher=AES256 RNP.sys.mjs:2070:16

09:58:18.639 openpgp: Will display status for imap://bpkasper%40gmail.com@imap.gmail.com:993/fetch%3EUID%3E/_Logins%3E748?part=1.1.1.2&filename=OpenPGP_0xEDFEA1D0222FF381.asc mimeDecrypt.sys.mjs:562:16

​Note the 40-second delay between the first and second log messages.

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