Delphi - Sign email - S/MIME

The following vb example codes demonstrate how to sign email to S/MIME format with digital signature.

Email Digital Signature

Digital signature prevents email content is faked or changed in transport level. Encrypting email protects email content from exposure to inappropriate recipients. Both digital signature and email encrypting depend on digital certificate.

If you have an email digital signature certificate installed on your machine, you can find it in “Control Panel” -> “Internet Options” -> “Content” -> “Certificates” -> “Personal”.

email ceritificate

Then you can use your email certificate to sign the email by the following code. If you don’t have a certificate for your email address, you MUST get a digital certificate for personal email protection from third-party certificate authorities such as www.verisign.com.

If you need a free certificate for your email address, you can go to http://www.comodo.com/home/email-security/free-email-certificate.php to apply for one year free email certificate.

Installation

EASendMail is a SMTP component which supports all operations of SMTP/ESMTP protocols (RFC 821, RFC 822, RFC 2554). Before you can use the following example codes, you should download the EASendMail Installer and install it on your machine at first.

Add reference

To use EASendMail SMTP ActiveX Object in your Delphi project, the first step is “Add Unit file of EASendMail to your project”. Please go to C:\Program Files\EASendMail\Include\delphi or C:\Program Files (x86)\EASendMail\Include\delphi folder, find EASendMailObjLib_TLB.pas, and then copy this file to your project folder.

unit Unit1;

interface
// include EASendMailObjLib_TLB unit to your Delphi Project
uses
Windows, Messages, SysUtils, Variants, Classes, Graphics, Controls, Forms,
Dialogs, EASendMailObjLib_TLB, StdCtrls;

You can also create “EASendMailObjLib_TLB.pas” manually like this:

  • Delphi 7

    Please choose menu -> Project -> Import Type Library and select EASendMailObj ActiveX Object, click Create Unit, the reference of EASendMail ActiveX Object will be added to your project.

    add reference in Delphi
  • Delphi XE

    If you use Delphi XE to import the Type library, Please choose menu -> Component -> Import Component -> Import Type Library -> and select EASendMailObj ActiveX Object -> have Generate Component Wrapper checked -> Create Unit.

Then you can start to use it in your Delphi Project.

Delphi - Sign email - S/MIME - example

The following example codes demonstrate signing email with digital signature - S/MIME. In order to run it correctly, please change SMTP server, user, password, sender, recipient value to yours.

Note

To get full sample projects, please download and install EASendMail on your machine.

Unit Unit1;

Interface

Uses
    Windows, Messages, SysUtils, Variants, Classes, Graphics, Controls, Forms,
    Dialogs, StdCtrls, EASendMailObjLib_TLB; // add EASendMail Unit

Type
    TForm1 = Class(TForm)
        Button1: TButton;
        Procedure Button1Click(Sender: TObject);
    private
        { Private declarations }
    public
        { Public declarations }
    End;

Const
    CRYPT_MACHINE_KEYSET = 32;
    CRYPT_USER_KEYSET = 4096;
    CERT_SYSTEM_STORE_CURRENT_USER = 65536;
    CERT_SYSTEM_STORE_LOCAL_MACHINE = 131072;

    ConnectNormal = 0;
    ConnectSSLAuto = 1;
    ConnectSTARTTLS = 2;
    ConnectDirectSSL = 3;
    ConnectTryTLS = 4;

Var
    Form1: TForm1;

Implementation

{$R *.dfm}

Procedure TForm1.Button1Click(Sender: TObject);
Var
    oSmtp : TMail;
Begin
    oSmtp := TMail.Create(Application);
    oSmtp.LicenseCode := 'TryIt';

    // Set your sender email address
    oSmtp.FromAddr := 'test@emailarchitect.net';

    // Add recipient email address
    oSmtp.AddRecipientEx('support@emailarchitect.net', 0);

    // Set email subject
    oSmtp.Subject := 'test email from Delphi with digital signature';

    // Set body text
    oSmtp.BodyText := 'this is a test email sent from Delphi with digital signature';

    // Add digital signature
    If Not oSmtp.SignerCert.FindSubject('test@emailarchitect.net',
        CERT_SYSTEM_STORE_CURRENT_USER, 'my') Then
        Begin
        ShowMessage(oSmtp.SignerCert.GetLastError());
        exit;
        End;

    If Not oSmtp.SignerCert.HasCertificate Then
        Begin
        ShowMessage('Signer certificate has no private key, ' +
        'this certificate can not be used to sign email');
        End;

    // Your SMTP server address
    oSmtp.ServerAddr := 'smtp.emailarchitect.net';

    // User and password for ESMTP authentication, if your server doesn't require
    // user authentication, please remove the following codes
    oSmtp.UserName := 'test@emailarchitect.net';
    oSmtp.Password := 'testpassword';

    // ConnectTryTLS means if server supports SSL/TLS connection, SSL/TLS is used automatically
    oSmtp.ConnectType := ConnectTryTLS;

    // If your server uses 587 port
    // oSmtp.ServerPort := 587;

    // If your server uses 25/587/465 port with SSL/TLS
    // oSmtp.ConnectType := ConnectSSLAuto;
    // oSmtp.ServerPort := 587; // 25 or 587 or 465

    ShowMessage('start to send email ...');

    If oSmtp.SendMail() = 0 Then
        ShowMessage('email was sent successfully!')
    Else
        ShowMessage('failed to send email with the following error: '
        + oSmtp.GetLastErrDescription());

End;

End.

Signature algorithm

You can use SignatureHashAlgorithm property to set MD5, SHA1, SHA256, SHA384 or SHA512 signature algorithm. SHA256 is recommended.

RSASSA-PSS Signature

If you need to use RSASSA-PSS signature scheme, you need a special version of EASendMail, please have a look at this topic:

RSASSA-PSS + RSA-OAEP Encryption with SHA256

TLS 1.2 protocol

TLS is the successor of SSL, more and more SMTP servers require TLS 1.2 encryption now.

If your operating system is Windows XP/Vista/Windows 7/Windows 2003/2008/2008 R2/2012/2012 R2, you need to enable TLS 1.2 protocol in your operating system like this:

Enable TLS 1.2 on Windows XP/Vista/7/10/Windows 2008/2008 R2/2012

32bit/x64 ActiveX DLL

Seperate builds of run-time dll for 32 and x64 platform

File Platform
Installation Path\Lib\native\x86\EASendMailObj.dll 32 bit
Installation Path\Lib\native\x64\EASendMailObj.dll 64 bit

Distribution

  • Standard EXE

    For VB6, C++, Delphi or other standard exe application, you can distribute EASendMailObj.dll with your application to target machine without COM-registration and installer. To learn more detail, please have a look at Registration-free COM with Manifest File.

  • Script

    For ASP, VBScript, VBA, MS SQL Stored Procedure, you need to install EASendMail on target machine by EASendMail installer, both 32bit/x64 DLL are installed and registered.

Appendix

Comments

If you have any comments or questions about above example codes, please click here to add your comments.