[OTR-users] OTR-users Digest, Vol 82, Issue 1

[Ian Goldberg]

On Thu, Jul 27, 2017 at 09:19:21AM -0700, Robin Hobbensiefken wrote:
> They were past encrypted messages sent using OTR in Pidgin over our Google
> accounts. They still show up in our google chat logs but they're encrypted
> and all start with ?OTR: and then the encrypted message.  I figured they
> wouldn't be recoverable but I thought I'd ask just in case. Would have been
> nice to be able to see them for personal reasons but my friend and I knew
> what we were getting into when we decided to use OTR. Such is life.

That's correct; if neither you nor your friend configured your pidgin to
log the plaintext messages, then they're not recoverable.  Which of
course is the point; the forward secrecy properties of OTR would be lost
if someone capturing your computer after the fact could recover old
conversations.
-- 
Ian Goldberg
Professor and University Research Chair
Cheriton School of Computer Science
University of Waterloo