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The reason it works so well is that Trevor started with the question "why is OTR so complicated?" and began removing parts until he had the minimum. Then, he lo
by NateLawson 11y ago
The reason it works so well is that Trevor started with the question "why is OTR so complicated?" and began removing parts until he had the minimum. Then, he looked at that and built a completely different protocol that achieved the same goals but where every part mattered.
That's usually the sign of a good crypto design -- every bit of the message and computation is vital and can't be removed without everything else falling apart. Excessive round trips, duplicate fields, data sent twice -- these are all signs of a lousy design that probably has security flaws.
- dvanduzer 11y agoIt would be a far simpler crypto design if it didn't insist on deniability as a feature. OTR always operated in a weird niche, but it solved a specific problem for IM that everyone had. But simpler / more elegant protocols don't always win, and never because of the quality of the crypto. For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_public-key_infrastructure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_public-key_infrastructu...
- rosser 11y agoIf you need deniability, you need it. Like, your life could literally depend on having it. I'd say that justifies some protocol complexity.
- zmanian 11y agoMost of the protocols with forward secrecy and non-deniability also require synchronous communication to agree on ephemeral keys. Deniability is almost a nice side effect of the asynchronous design. It doesn't seem like it adds tremendous complexity unto itself.