[OTR-users] New revelations

[Paul Wouters]

On Sun, 8 Sep 2013, Theodore M Rolle Jr wrote:

> Has any thought been given to the recent revelations concerning the NSA
> and GCHQ?

You mean the fact that they say they have a desire to break end-to-end
encryption (and presuming they mean OTR) ?

> TrueCrypt allows different encryption algorithms and the specification
> of the order of use.
> See: http://www.truecrypt.org/docs/encryption-algorithms

Crypto agility is good. OTR has the capability to change long term
identity key algorithms. We don't really have an alternative for DH as
far as I know.

> If the encryption with more than one system can be performed one one
> block, passed to the next, ... While the second algorithm enciphers the
> first block, the first algorithm starts on the next block.  The slowest
> algorithm determines the encryption rate.

That's quite a different use case. Not sure if that applies at all to
OTR.

> Dependence on AES (a weakened version of Rijndael) seems specious at best.

Citation needed :P It is speculation that AES was weakened by the NSA.
Moreover, alternatives are not provingly more secure.

Don't panic yet.

Paul