Email – How to Automatically Encrypt, Sign, and Forward Root’s Email

I just saw the other response and guess I never wrote up the solution I actually implemented. It turns out that python imaplib is straightforward and I wrote a very quick script. Barring a few changes (e.g., anonymizing my various USERNAMEs, EMAILPASSWORD, WORKDOMAINNAME, MYGPGKEYID). I also don't just send encrypted it; but prepend the subject with the username of the sender and put some of the header stuff before the GPG (in case I'm reading it on my phone and can't decrypt).

#!/usr/bin/python

import imaplib
import email
from datetime import datetime,timedelta
import shelve
from subprocess import Popen, PIPE

def piped_call(command1, arg1_list, command2, arg2_list):
    """
    if arg1_tuple = (a10, a11, a12); arg2_tuple is (a20, a21)    
    This executes "command1 a10 a11 a12 | command2 a20 a21 a22"
    """
    if type(arg1_list) not in (list, tuple):
        arg1_list = [arg1_list,]
    if type(arg2_list) not in (list, tuple):
        arg2_list = [arg2_list,]
    p1 = Popen([command1,]+list(arg1_list), stdout=PIPE)
    p2 = Popen([command2,]+list(arg2_list), stdin=p1.stdout, stdout=PIPE)
    p1.stdout.close()
    return p2.communicate()[0]

shlf = shelve.open('/home/USERNAME/mail/mail.shlf')
# This shelf (a persistent python dictionary written to file) has as its key 
# the IMAP message ids of all emails that have been processed by this script.
# Every time the script runs, I fetch all emails from the current day
# (except from midnight to 1am, where I fetch all emails since yesterday)
# and then send all emails that haven't been sent previously 
# by checking message ids against the python shelf.

M = imaplib.IMAP4_SSL(host='imap.WORKDOMAINNAME.com', port=993)
M.login('EMAILUSERNAME', 'EMAILPASSWORD')
M.select()
dt = datetime.now() - timedelta(0,5*60*60) 
# Only search for messages since the day of an hour earlier.  
# This way messages from yesterday don't get lost at midnight; as well as limiting the number of messages to process through to just todays.    
typ, uid_data = M.uid('search', None, '(SINCE %s)' % dt.strftime('%d-%b-%Y'))

for num in uid_data[0].split():
    typ, data = M.uid('fetch', num, '(RFC822)')
    e = email.message_from_string(data[0][1])
    print 'Message %s\n%s\n' % (num, e['subject'])
    if num not in shlf:
        sender_email = e['return-path']
        for s in ('<', '>', '@WORKDOMAINNAME.com'):
            sender_email = sender_email.replace(s,'')
        subject = "%s: %s" % (sender_email, e['Subject'])
        body = ("From: %s\n"
                "To: %s\n"
                "Cc: %s\n"
                "Subject: %s\n\n" % (e['From'], e['To'], e['Cc'], e['subject']))
        payload = e.get_payload()
        if type(payload) in (list, tuple):
            payload = str(payload[0])
        else:
            payload = str(payload)
        encrypted_payload = piped_call('echo', (payload,),
                                       'gpg', ('-e', '-a', '-r', 'MYGPGKEYID'))
        body += encrypted_payload
        piped_call('echo', (body,), 
                   'mail', ['USERNAME@gmail.com', '-s', subject])
        shlf[num] = datetime.now()


M.close()
M.logout()

I then added the following lines to my crontab (the script above is named mail.py inside a directory called mail), so it will run every 5 minutes during the normal hours on weekdays (M-F 8-7pm) and less frequently at other hours. (crontab -e)

# Every 5 minutes, M-F from 8am - 7pm.    
*/5 8-19 * * 1-5  cd /home/USERNAME/mail && ./mail.py >> /home/USERNAME/mail/mail.log 2>&1
# Every 30 minutes, Sat&Sun from 8am-7pm
0,30 8-19 * * 6,7  cd /home/USERNAME/mail && ./mail.py >> /home/USERNAME/mail/mail.log 2>&1
# Every 30 minutes, M-F 8pm-2am; (no emails 2am-8am)
0,30 0-2,20-23 * * 1-5  cd /home/USERNAME/mail && ./mail.py >> /home/USERNAME/mail/mail.log 2>&1
# Every 60 minutes, Sat&Sun hours 8pm-2am; (no emails 2am-8am)
0 0-2,20-23 * * 6-7  cd /home/USERNAME/mail && ./mail.py >> /home/USERNAME/mail/mail.log 2>&1

Any user, including root, can forward their local email by putting the forwarding address in a file called ~/.forward. You can have multiple addresses there, all on one line and separated by comma. If you want both local delivery and forwarding, put root@localhost as one of the addresses.

The system administrator can define email aliases in the file /etc/aliases. This file contains lines like root: cwd@mailhost.example.com, /root/mailbox; the effect is the same as having cwd@mailhost.example.com, /root/mailbox in ~root/.forward. You may need to run a program such as newaliases after changing /etc/aliases.

Note that the workings of .forward and /etc/aliases depend on your MTA. Most MTAs implement the main features provided by the traditional sendmail, but check your MTA's documentation.