Enigmail freeze (100% cpu load) on encrypted attachments

OpenPGP addon for Mozilla Thunderbird

Brought to you by: pbrunschwig

Enigmail freeze (100% cpu load) on encrypted attachments

Forum: Enigmail Support

Creator: new-gen23

Created: 2018-01-31

Updated: 2018-03-06

new-gen23 - 2018-01-31

Using:
Thunderbird 52.6.0 (64-bit)
Enigmail 1.9.9 (from enigmail.net)

Problem:
Whenever I receive an E-Mail with an encrypted attachment, the Thunderbird CPU load goes up to 100% and the application freezes. After a random time, Thunderbird recovers and the load goes down. However, when I try to save the attachement: same problem. Switching to another E-Mail and back: same problem.
This is sadly unusable. Any suggestions for another linux mail client where the enigmail does not freeze?

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Patrick Brunschwig - 2018-01-31

Is it the CPU for the Thunderbird process or for the gpg process? I can only guess, but this smells like you don't have enough RAM, and the machine is swapping.

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Karl Kashofer - 2018-02-11

I seem to have the same proble. Encrypting or decrypting email with larger attachments (2-3mb) freezes the computer. 100% CPU for several minutes. This happens on my machine using debian stretch (12GB RAM), and also on my new, clean buster installation (4GB). Problem persists when i disable all TB add-ons except enigmail.

Buster config:
gpg (GnuPG) 2.2.4
libgcrypt 1.8.1
TB 52.6
Enigmail 1.9.9

Stretch config:
gpg 2.1.18
libgcrypt 1.7.6-beta
TB 52.6
Enigmail 1.9.9

Its the thunderbird process that shows 100% CPU, the gpg process is there during that time but has no cpu. I can catch the gpg command used by enigmail via ps-ef and run it on the attached file in console. There encryption only takes fractions of a second. Tested with a RSA 4096 and a RSA 2048 key.

Anything else i can do ?

Last edit: Karl Kashofer 2018-02-11

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Karl Kashofer - 2018-03-06

This problem seems to be PGP/MIME specific, it does not occur when i switch to Inline-PGP.

I also noticed that the problem seems to be located before the actual en/decryption step. When i press send, CPU immediately goes high and only after ~30 seconds the program asks for the passphrase for signing the email.

Likewise if i click an encrypted email with attachment in the inbox it takes ~30 seconds of 100%CPU until i get asked for the passphrase.

Please help,
Regards,
KK

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