[OTR-users] OTR and CHAT question

[Brian Morrison]

On Wed, 24 Jan 2007 21:38:08 +0200
Marti <marti at juffo.org> wrote:

> On 1/24/07, Peter E. Carrier <pcarrier at mit.edu> wrote:
> > Is
> > there a way to turn on OTR for the chat room?
> 
> Unfortunately, not. The OTR protocol  does not support multi-user chat
> at this point.

This came from a posting to this list by Ian Goldberg on January 7th
(I've trimmed out the first part for brevity):

On Sun, Jan 07, 2007 at 03:27:06PM -0500, Mark G. Spencer wrote:
> On a somewhat related note - I really like the OTR philosophy and was
> wondering if anyone was working on extending OTR to the
> chatroom/conference functionality of the IM clients and networks?
> Basically, to replicate a "private" conversation amongst a number of
> people in a secure room.  (At least private in the sense that all the
> participants can feel comfortable their chat is secure in-transit,
> they have repudiation, etc.)  

That's one of the stated future directions of OTR.  Probably not this
term, though.  One of the tricky bits is determining exactly what
you mean by "deniable authentication" in a group context.  During the
conversation, should Bob be able to tell that this message came from
Alice, and not from Charlie, or just that someone in the chatroom sent
it?  After the conversation, of course, we'd like complete deniability
and forgeability.

   - Ian

-- 

Brian Morrison

   "Arguing with an engineer is like wrestling with a pig in the mud;
    after a while you realize you are muddy and the pig is enjoying it."