[OTR-users] OTR and Yahoo

[Ian Goldberg]

On Mon, Mar 20, 2006 at 09:58:22AM -0500, ben k wrote:
> I am noticing the same thing.  OTR is not establishing a private connection 
> any more through the Yahoo network.

Confirmed.  jbash and I did some analysis, and it seems the Yahoo
network is dropping packets that look like they're base64-encoded.

For example, we observed Yahoo would drop this message we tried just
typing (well, cut-n-pasting) into gaim:

+c6efNCT/0ErpFDuKOS1f2p99gAnAh/gV5oQjI1GaBqrza00GeDGP/yfLXhx4FIY/3DKFFrDveulMw5hYitAFhN4W6BqfD6KWk7F774q6uzhBtMjSCpJg/u4NS74T+KIvXq5Y9wXWLBws6WqMJBdjJfxMDYf1HgDZ6PZC3wqIt/dStNzRj3ihWdTxKMDl/BhbHgyuJax+

But removing either the leading or trailing +, or various other
modifications, made it go through.  On the other hand, repititions of
"0123456789" could be much longer than the above string, and go through
just fine.

I can't tell you if this is a newly introduced bug on Yahoo's part, or
if they're intentionally trying to block people from sending binary
and/or encrypted messages.  Does anyone know if they have a way to
submit a bug report for the IM service?

Thanks,

   - Ian