Book:OTRS 3.0 - Admin Manual/Chapter 16

OTRS has the capability to sign or encrypt outgoing messages with PGP. Further, encrypted incoming messages can be decrypted. Encryption and decryption are done with the GPL tool GnuPG. To setup GnuPG for OTRS, the following steps have to be performed:

  Install GnuPG, via the package manager of your operating system.



 Configure GnuPG for use with OTRS. The necessary directories for GnuPG and a private key have to be created. The command shown in Script 16.1 has to be executed as user 'otrs' from a shell.

As shown in Script 16.1, the default settings can be applied for most of the required parameters. Only the values for the key owner have to be entered correctly, with a proper password specified for the key.



 Now OTRS has to be made ready to use PGP. From the Admin console, open the SysConfig interface and search for "PGP". Select the sub group Crypt::PGP from the search results.

In the screen for the PGP settings, PGP should be activated for OTRS (first option). Also, the path to the gpg program should be set and checked.

The next config setting (PGP::Options) may also require changing. Via this config setting, the parameters that are used for every execution of gpg by the 'otrs' user can be specified. In particular, the directory of the config files for GnuPG of the 'otrs' user is important. In the example /opt/otrs/.gnupg is used. This directory was created earlier during the PGP configuration.

Via the next config option (PGP::Key::Password) it is possible to specify the pairs of key IDs and their passwords for own private keys. Because communication partners from outside write to the ticket system with their messages encrypted with your public key, OTRS can decrypt these messages with the ID/passwords specified here.

How to get the id of your own private key? The ID of your own private key is already shown during the key generation (see step 1 from above). It is also possible to get the ID if the command specified in Script 16.2 is executed as user 'otrs':

The ID of the private key can be found in the line that starts with "sub". It is a hexadecimal string that is eight characters long, in the example above it is "52B97069". The password you have to specify for this key in the ticket system is the same that was given during key generation.

After this data is inserted, the "Update" button can be used to save the settings. OTRS is ready to receive and decrypt encoded messages now.



 Finally, import a customer's public key. This ensures that encrypted messages can be sent out to this customer. There are two ways to import a public key of a customer.

The first way is to specify the public key of a customer in the customer management interface.

The second way is to specify the key via the PGP settings, reachable from the Admin page. On the right section of this screen, all already imported public keys of customers are displayed. After PGP has been activated and configured for OTRS, your own public key should also be listed there. In the left area of the PGP setting screen it is possible to search for keys. Also, a new public key can be uploaded into the system from a file.

The files with the public key that need to be imported into OTRS have to be GnuPGP compatible key files. In most cases, the key stored in a file is an "ASCII armored key". OTRS can deal with this format.

 