[OTR-users] Re: [OTR-announce] Flaw in OTR Protocol (with workaround!)

[Ian Goldberg]

On Wed, Aug 03, 2005 at 02:51:31PM -0400, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> On 8/3/05, Ian Goldberg <ian at cypherpunks.ca> wrote:
> > Having fragmentation work would simplify a number of things, so I think
> > we might try again.  There's still the big issue of how to determine
> > what the correct maximum packet size should be, and I don't know of a
> > good way to do that (see the above thread).  Hardcoding some values
> > is a kludgy workaround.  Making those values user-configurable at least
> > allows user fixes if the networks change.  Any other suggestions?
> 
> *IF* we figure out how to survive the ratelimiting and if we are able
> to catch rejected messages:
> Path MTU discovery. 

Yes, of course.  The problem is exactly that we're *not* able to catch
rejected messages, as far as I know.  If you send a message that's too
large into the AIM network, it will happily accept it.  At some unknown
time in the future, you *may* receive an error message that says "you
recently sent a message that was too big".  Your buddy will simply
receive nothing.

And then there's the problem that gaim plugins don't even get to *see*
that error message at all, as useless as it may be.

   - Ian