Creating a Binary Message from PEM/Base64 Data

A new message can be created by using text from a Privacy Enhanced Mail (PEM) Base64-encoded file. Alternatively, the Base64 text can be entered directly (although it is usually copied and pasted).

To create a new binary message, use PEM/Base64 Message option:

1. Click the File option from the File Operations toolbar.

2. Select the New Message > PEM/Base64 Message option to open a Hex Editor (Ctrl + O for a shortcut):

The toolbar icon can also be used:

3. The following PEM/Base64 Message dialog box will be displayed:

4. Unencrypted data from a PEM/Base64 certificate file can be pasted into the text editor pane, loaded from a file, or entered directly.

5. Pressing the OK button will either cause current project information to be used to interpret the message or a new message dialog to be launched. The user may also press Cancel at this point to cancel the operation.

If project information is available, a dialog box asking if this information should be used is displayed. If 'Yes' is clicked, current project information will be used. In this case, the message type (BER/DER or PER) and the schema information will be used to attempt to decode the converted binary data.

A new message dialog will be launched if project information is empty or 'No' was selected in the dialog box above. The new message dialog will begin with the display of the Message Parameters dialog box:

6. The Encoding Rules to be used with the binary message are selected and the user clicks Ok.

7. If the Encoding Rules are BER/DER/CER, the message is displayed in Tag View.

If the PEM message has BEGIN/END CERTIFICATE lines, the X.509 certificate schemas will automatically be assigned and the message displayed in Element View. An example of this is shown in the following image:

8. If one of the PER options is selected, a file selection dialog box is displayed to allow the user to select an ASN.1 schema file:

9. The user then selects a file and clicks Open to open the file and move on to the Select PDU Type dialog box or selects Cancel to abort the operation.

10. If Open is clicked the Select PDU Type dialog box is displayed:

The user must know the PDU type of the message; it is not possible to infer this information from a PER message as can be done in some cases for BER.

11. The message will then be displayed in element view.