[OTR-users] OTR file transfers (again)

[Paul Wouters]

On Tue, 22 Jun 2010, Gregory Maxwell wrote:

>> To send a file, encode it into plain text (e.g. base64) and send it
>> over OTR as one big instant message. Then the OTR plugin on the other
>> end could perhaps recognize some sort of marker (e.g. "THISISAFILE:"),
>> and rather than display the data, save it somewhere.
>>
>> Seems this is how email attachments work, and OTR already handles
>> lengthy messages, if I understand correctly. Just a thought.
>
> Various IM systems rate limit messages sent through the service.   The
> limit is high enough to not normally impact conversations, but a file
> transfer isn't going to work too well.
>
> Normal IM file transfers run directly from client to client (with all
> the resulting nat traversal problems and difficulty using OTR
> transport)

There is a proof of concept for file transfers using OTR at
https://gsoc.xelerance.com/projects/otr-symkey

Code is available at https://gsoc.xelerance.com/projects/otr-symkey/repository
and tar balls of libotr and pidgin-otr with this support are on ftp.xelerance.com

It still requires work. If someone has time, talk to Ian about the code.

Paul