[OTR-dev] OTR Data is alive!

[Hans-Christoph Steiner]

On 09/06/2013 03:00 PM, Nathan of Guardian wrote:
> 
> On 09/06/2013 02:49 PM, Peter Saint-Andre wrote:
>> That sounds an awful lot like the 10-year-old file transfer method in
>> XMPP:
>> http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0096.html
> It was definitely an inspiration, except that we wanted it to be
> encrypted. Perhaps our only innovation is figuring out how to packetize
> it appropriately in the TLV fields of OTR.

Also, file transfer in the OTR band offers lots of possibilities for
anonymizing the file transfer.  First, all OTR packets can be quantized, so it
would be hard to distinguish a chat packet from a file block packet.  Then,
its only in band, so it is not immediately and obviously flagged as a file
transfer, unlike out-of-band techniques.  Lastly, the file transfer packets
could be slaved to actual chat timing so that there isn't an obvious file
transfer timing.  Sure this would be slow, but if it was paired with a
bittorrent-style logic, files could be spread around quite anonymously using
whatever chat service happened to be available.

.hc

>> Of course, I understand that OTR works with any IM protocol...
> Yes, and we are already expanding beyond XMPP in our own client, so this
> is useful for us to have at an abstract layer.
> 
> +n
> 
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