[OTR-users] AIM and shadow accounts

[Richard James Salts]

On Thu, 22 Oct 2009 08:34:18 Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> As most OTR users on AIM know: If you log in from multiple places and
> talk to another OTR user you'll end up in an "OTR war" with the remote
> client that you can't hear.
>
> AOL tells you (sometimes?) about the second user on your account if
> its coming from another IP, but doesn't tell you if the clients share
> IP.
>
> The war stops if you log the remote client out, which can be done
> remotely by sending "1" to aolsystemmsg.
>
> I have recently observed OTR wars happening with my client when no
> other client I control could possibly be logged in, yet sending "1" to
> aolsystemmsg stops the war so it must have been my client duplicated
> rather than the remote party.
>
> I first observed this some months ago but I wasn't entirely sure that
> it couldn't have been another regular client of mine logged in but I
> changed my password anyways.  Since it is still happening occasionally
> I can only speculate that something is sniffing my password on some
> network I use (since AIM sends it in the clear) or that some
> AIM-internal process is interfering with OTR.
>
> The latter possibility is especially concerning because it would be
> fairly easy to convince people to de-install OTR by occasionally
> subjecting them to this kind of behaviour.
>
> Is this something specific to the networks I use, or are other OTR
> users on aim seeing this?
I've seen this using xmpp/jabber from multiple locations, I'm not sure whether 
oscar/aim prefers one location over another but when I unticked automatically 
initiate otr conversations it stopped warring between each other.

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