[OTR-dev] OTR Data is alive!

[Ian Goldberg]

On Fri, Sep 06, 2013 at 12:30:44AM -0400, Nathan of Guardian wrote:
> 
> At this moment, I am transfering a 26MB file between two Android devices
> running ChatSecure (Gibberbot v12). The file transfer is fully encrypted
> using the "extra symmetric key" of OTRv3, and the conduit for transfer
> are the TLV data fields in the OTR protocol itself.One user is on a
> private XMPP service, and the other is on Google Talk.
> 
> In summary, we are tunneling an fully verified, ephemerally encrypted
> file transfer inside of the ASCII message payload of XMPP, and it seems
> to be working like a charm.
> 
> Data throughput *over Tor* is about 40kbps, with the 26MB file taking
> about 5-10 minute to transfer.
> 
> We've merged the work into master, but if you want to look at the
> previously open pull request, you can find it here:
> https://github.com/guardianproject/Gibberbot/pull/261
> 
> Three cheers to DevRandom for some really groundbreaking work on this
> effort, and of course to Ian and the OTR team for providing this new
> functionality in OTRv3 in a way that we can take advantage of it.
> 
> Now, how do we go about getting other OTR/XMPP apps to support OTR Data?
> Are there other similar implementations yet?
> 
> https://dev.guardianproject.info/projects/gibberbot/wiki/Sharing

Nice!

Does the transfer happen "in the background", so that you can continue
chatting, or does it lock up your chat until the file transfer is
completed?

Do you have a carefully documented spec for the TLV type, contents, and
semantics?

   - Ian