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OTR: the secure messaging protocol for cypherpunk hipsters. OTR is useful if you go to great lengths to exchange public keys, and as soon as the key changes yo

OTR: the secure messaging protocol for cypherpunk hipsters. OTR is useful if you go to great lengths to exchange public keys, and as soon as the key changes you go through all of it again. (I don't really count shared secrets as a secure means of authenticating your key, since if you have the shared secret, the key can be substituted and thus is irrelevant) That's probably fine if you're just chatting aimlessly and don't need to rely on secure communication regularly. But it's a pain in the ass if you wanted to rely on it for remote long-term secure communication. "Privacy" is about all it's useful for (assuming more attacks aren't found in the protocol). (Side note: to defeat all this complicated encryption and expose identities, just become a member of the hacker community. They're quite gossipy)

tptacek 10y ago
First: OTR has been pretty resilient, cryptographically speaking. And from a code quality perspective, libotr gets a lot of shit, but I won a $1000 bet with Matthew Green that nobody would find a sev:hi flaw in it for an entire year, and despite stirring the shit on Twitter about the bet, nobody found anything. I wouldn't use OTR today, but in 2011, when this story started, libotr wasn't a weird recommendation.
- peterwwillis 10y ago
  I remember testing the plugin when it was first released for gaim. I certainly thought it was weird, and a bit buggy. Version 1 had plenty of holes. Later (including when it was used by the author) version 2 had more holes. So I don't really buy the idea that "stirring the shit on Twitter" for a grand would be enough to get serious research done - and then published - to expose this fledgling protocol's newest bugs. It wasn't a weird recommendation for a cypherpunk, of course, which is what i'm really saying. It's a hipster messaging protocol.
  - tptacek 10y ago
    I don't think this is a reasonable way to sum up OTR, and I also suspect you're conflating the security of the libotr C plugin itself with the security of the protocol. I don't think $1000 is a lot for a libotr bet, but from the caliber of people who submitted attempts to end the bet (almost all of which were libpurple problems), I'm satisfied that it got quite a bit of attention.
- stinkytaco 10y ago
  Out of curiosity and getting off subject, what would you use today? Signal? I honestly can't think of another protocol that would check the same boxes as OTR for me: 1) real time 2) secure 3) open and trusted 4) on a desktop platform and 5) integrated with tools that allow me to do things like clip or archive those messages if necessary. Perhaps you can do these things with Signal or something else, but most other options seems either too centralized or too ephemeral.
  - aidenn0 10y ago
    FWIW, XMPP has a double-ratched based upon the signal protocol called OMEMO.
    - Tomte 10y ago
      I'm not surprised, XMPP has eveything. In twenty different variations each. Self-fracturing its community infinitesimally, because nobody has the same plugins for the same proposed XMPP extensions installed.

tptacek 10y ago

First: OTR has been pretty resilient, cryptographically speaking. And from a code quality perspective, libotr gets a lot of shit, but I won a $1000 bet with Matthew Green that nobody would find a sev:hi flaw in it for an entire year, and despite stirring the shit on Twitter about the bet, nobody found anything. I wouldn't use OTR today, but in 2011, when this story started, libotr wasn't a weird recommendation.

peterwwillis 10y ago
I remember testing the plugin when it was first released for gaim. I certainly thought it was weird, and a bit buggy. Version 1 had plenty of holes. Later (including when it was used by the author) version 2 had more holes. So I don't really buy the idea that "stirring the shit on Twitter" for a grand would be enough to get serious research done - and then published - to expose this fledgling protocol's newest bugs. It wasn't a weird recommendation for a cypherpunk, of course, which is what i'm really saying. It's a hipster messaging protocol.
- tptacek 10y ago
  I don't think this is a reasonable way to sum up OTR, and I also suspect you're conflating the security of the libotr C plugin itself with the security of the protocol. I don't think $1000 is a lot for a libotr bet, but from the caliber of people who submitted attempts to end the bet (almost all of which were libpurple problems), I'm satisfied that it got quite a bit of attention.
stinkytaco 10y ago
Out of curiosity and getting off subject, what would you use today? Signal? I honestly can't think of another protocol that would check the same boxes as OTR for me: 1) real time 2) secure 3) open and trusted 4) on a desktop platform and 5) integrated with tools that allow me to do things like clip or archive those messages if necessary. Perhaps you can do these things with Signal or something else, but most other options seems either too centralized or too ephemeral.
- aidenn0 10y ago
  FWIW, XMPP has a double-ratched based upon the signal protocol called OMEMO.
  - Tomte 10y ago
    I'm not surprised, XMPP has eveything. In twenty different variations each. Self-fracturing its community infinitesimally, because nobody has the same plugins for the same proposed XMPP extensions installed.