Cannot decrypt an email message with PGP Command Line

Products

• PGP Command Line

Issue/Introduction

PGP Command Line can decrypt RFC 822-encoded email messages and will respect MIME headers and CRLF line endings if the --email option is used. For example, this command will decrypt an encrypted Internet message format file:

pgp --decrypt --email encrypted.eml -o decrypted.eml --passphrase mypassword

However, this fails if the end of line (EOL) format in the Internet message format file is Unix (LF) rather than Windows (CR LF).

Trying to decrypt an Internet message format file containing Unix (LF) end of lines results in the following error:

pgp:decrypt (3090:operation failed, PGPError #-12569)

Environment

Symantec PGP Command Line 10.5 and above.

Resolution

Ensure that the encrypted email file uses Windows (CR LF) end of lines.

Please note that starting with release 10.5.1, PGP Command Line can decrypt Outlook *.msg files. The syntax is the same as for *.eml files and the output is a decrypted RFC 822-encoded email message:

pgp --decrypt --email encrypted.msg -o decrypted.eml --passphrase mypassword