[OTR-users] OTR suddenly not connecting

[D.C. Williams]

WORKAROUND: After digging and tweaking as much as I was able using all the
machines at my disposal (6), I was only able to get one pair to connect via
OTR one time. As was observed earlier by Bits (IIRC), attempts to refresh
that connection also interminably failed to complete. My solution was to
migrate from ICQ accounts to AIM accounts. Doing so immediately solved all
problems and OTR connections were established promptly just as happened for
many years with ICQ up until 2 days ago.

I can't determine if it's a protocol problem or an ICQ network/server
problem, but I am absolutely convinced that something related to ICQ has
changed in the past two days. Nothing else was altered here and switching
to the new network/protocol immediately resolved the issue. I can only
wonder if the goons at No Secrets Allowed have somehow co-opted or clamped
down on ICQ. As a result, I-won't-CQ any longer . . . more like FQ.

I also discovered a slick option called TorChat (
https://github.com/prof7bit/TorChat/wiki). There's a stand-alone client
that's fully functional but not nearly as slick as Pidgin. There is also a
Pidgin plug-in that takes a bit of cobbling to work and had I not gotten
AIM to work, that would have been my next effort. I'm a big fan of Tor and
it would be great if someone with more time and better coding/packaging
skills could create a Pidgin plug-in for TorChat that is better integrated
and more easily installable.

Thanks to all who chipped in with suggestions and help on this issue.


On Thu, Oct 31, 2013 at 5:33 AM, Ian Goldberg <ian at cypherpunks.ca> wrote:

> On Wed, Oct 30, 2013 at 10:09:03PM -0400, Bits wrote:
> > I just gave Wireshark a go - getting inside this stream's going to be a
> > pain - all Wireshark's showing me is that everything's happening inside
> > SSL/TLS.  I suppose that means to get meaningful messages Pidgin needs to
> > be run through some kinda of decrypting HTTPS proxy server, MitM style.
> >
> > Not really sure how to do that; the proxy would need to gen certs on the
> > fly and sign them with a key Pidgin can be made to trust.  Is there an
> > easier way?
>
> In your pidgin Accounts list, you can set your ICQ account to not use
> TLS.
>
>    - Ian
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