Encryption plugins for gaim

Really jbash at velvet.com m2n-c2-cryptography at velvet.com
Wed Mar 16 10:04:38 PST 2005


> If you want encryption with authentication, there's the gaim-encryption
> plugin. I get the feeling gaim-otr is for more specific circumstances.

Actually, the only "specific circumstance" that OTR is really aimed at
is the IM environment. That is, it's an encryption scheme specifically
designed for the mode of use you'd most expect to see in IM, and it's
intended to be a complete answer for general-purpose one-to-one IM
communication.

The forward deniability is a special feature, but all the other features
you'd want are in there... including authentication between the parties
at the time the message is sent. From the point of view of the two
communicating parties, OTR has basically the same privacy and
authenticity guarantees as gaim-encryption, with forward deniability
added in.

The OTR project is trying to get OTR included in as many IM clients
as possible, with the idea of making it the de facto standard for
IM encryption.

I'd say it's ready for real use, although it's by no means static; there
are things that are known to still need to be added to the protocol.

                                                -- jbash

PS: Sorry about the weird "From" address... I read the list through a
news gateway, and this is the only way to get a post accepted.


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