[cryptography] why did OTR succeed in IM?
Someone on another list asked an interesting question: Why did OTR succeed in IM systems, where OpenPGP and x.509 did not? (The reason this is interesting (to me?) is that there are not so many instances in our field where there are open design competitions at this level. The results of such a competition can be illuminating as to what matters and what does not. E.g., OpenPGP v. S/MIME and SSH v. secure telnet are two such competitions.) iang ___ cryptography mailing list cryptography@randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography
Re: [cryptography] why did OTR succeed in IM?
On 03/23/2013 10:25 AM, ianG wrote: Someone on another list asked an interesting question: Why did OTR succeed in IM systems, where OpenPGP and x.509 did not? I find that interesting too. What list would that be? Guido. ___ cryptography mailing list cryptography@randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography
Re: [cryptography] why did OTR succeed in IM?
On 23 March 2013 09:25, ianG i...@iang.org wrote: Someone on another list asked an interesting question: Why did OTR succeed in IM systems, where OpenPGP and x.509 did not? Because Adium built it in? (The reason this is interesting (to me?) is that there are not so many instances in our field where there are open design competitions at this level. The results of such a competition can be illuminating as to what matters and what does not. E.g., OpenPGP v. S/MIME and SSH v. secure telnet are two such competitions.) iang ___ cryptography mailing list cryptography@randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography ___ cryptography mailing list cryptography@randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography
Re: [cryptography] why did OTR succeed in IM?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 3/23/13 7:36 AM, Ben Laurie wrote: On 23 March 2013 09:25, ianG i...@iang.org wrote: Someone on another list asked an interesting question: Why did OTR succeed in IM systems, where OpenPGP and x.509 did not? Because Adium built it in? In the early Jabber days, we had OpenPGP support in several clients such as Gabber, Psi, and WinJab. Although such clients could have created special-purpose PGP keys, in practice the perception was that OpenPGP was hard, that people would use existing keys, that Aunt Tillie would never have a PGP key, etc. It didn't help that (IIRC) GnuPG made some breaking API changes or somesuch around 2001 that annoyed various Jabber client developers. When we standardized the core Jabber protocol as XMPP at the IETF in 2003-2004, the working group settled on using X.509 for various not-so-good reasons related to IETF politics at the time, resulting in the monstrosity known as RFC 3923. (And we all know how well client-side X.509 certificates have worked out.) IMHO, there are three main reasons why OTR succeeded: 1. It worked across all IM systems. 2. It was relatively friendly for end users, compared to OpenPGP and X.509. 3. It was built into the most popular open-source IM clients (Pidgin and Adium). Peter - -- Peter Saint-Andre https://stpeter.im/ -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG/MacGPG2 v2.0.18 (Darwin) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://www.enigmail.net/ iQIcBAEBAgAGBQJRTd12AAoJEOoGpJErxa2pdTUP/1kayFnLB44xazI0u6KjKZU+ n5TzJwa3fxV0BF1monO+LP4ySTtRMeodY3zEpA+40vgMDEVKblqZ/0RgzQPvoCW7 AJWu4YYTRZVTMohA7aK09DaDaLJyj97kao/6NgOQpdrtNbJS3syxuSeYTgmEkQH0 uqUtiAulrDt4LYpMkrAT0l+6+mb8Q+5MkIpxwaJjjMGi/MItDRa85TE1j0EQA4e0 xnzAqaVlLYDySrmJR4E8HXE8XPdGe8MiYWt5+hhjeWjg2KU2OG7b6T3gYrUxPgxH Olpox7HG8tkWviKhQM7k9h4FGgsEkJWDYoLwSW4AJej2Gt8ok4gOzLlo/DCDAUOK hIwAMVIaanTREMaWqBqK20Sqh29t/zrcQsfqXNhElJV3QfGKHTT9aFAncnJR6bEy C4OuVomY3BQsBSZ4zOgndrwlkNo6i9D1k0xywE3VAKytWNuDLUbpghAWCt7ue97U gFTuUiK1DDj39qct9+NDGp6eDon9NsNLo+R8O6XlqwkEYcN5QuyF2Csi/6hAyNCX mSj31OBDgqwD1NBenU9BIicXRCUWSW2Vtc7An8OzSg8g2DR1ZJi5XlD2S26j8HUR d+COX0LmGWgY5w4bEtp+NzRc6W0Wri+NjyMH4D6uC9FayWpXPmg+xlfQYiznl9UC 9wQx5nnvncWRdE7pcqCN =FUsJ -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ cryptography mailing list cryptography@randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography
Re: [cryptography] why did OTR succeed in IM?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Mar 23, 2013, at 6:36 AM, Ben Laurie b...@links.org wrote: On 23 March 2013 09:25, ianG i...@iang.org wrote: Someone on another list asked an interesting question: Why did OTR succeed in IM systems, where OpenPGP and x.509 did not? Because Adium built it in? Yeah. And it just worked. It took me two hours to find a Jabber client that actually worked (Psi) and get Psi working with OpenPGP support, and even then it was just weird, from a UX perspective. But there's also one other thing, and that is that there was no other real competitor. So: * Greenfield advantage * Better UX * Better out-of-the-box experience. Jon -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: PGP Universal 3.2.0 (Build 1672) Charset: us-ascii wj8DBQFRTeWPsTedWZOD3gYRAgcxAJ9RLtQdYAsdluIKa/+hyBLDfCIVjwCg2bIq pZT24itMJrs0CHuTSIeVm3o= =WS8Z -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ cryptography mailing list cryptography@randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography
Re: [cryptography] why did OTR succeed in IM?
On 23 March 2013 16:51, Peter Saint-Andre stpe...@stpeter.im wrote: 3. It was built into the most popular open-source IM clients (Pidgin and Adium). It isn't actually built in to Pidgin. Should be, IMO. ___ cryptography mailing list cryptography@randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography
Re: [cryptography] why did OTR succeed in IM?
On Saturday, March 23, 2013, ianG wrote: Someone on another list asked an interesting question: Why did OTR succeed in IM systems, where OpenPGP and x.509 did not? Because it turns out that starting with anonymous key exchange is good enough in many cases. Leap of faith would have been a good addition, but would have created device sync issues, and the answer/question authentication is good enough. Imagine if we'd insisted on a PKI for IM... ___ cryptography mailing list cryptography@randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography
Re: [cryptography] why did OTR succeed in IM?
On 2013-03-24 3:25 AM, Jon Callas wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Mar 23, 2013, at 6:36 AM, Ben Laurie b...@links.org wrote: On 23 March 2013 09:25, ianG i...@iang.org wrote: Someone on another list asked an interesting question: Why did OTR succeed in IM systems, where OpenPGP and x.509 did not? Because Adium built it in? Yeah. And it just worked. The hard part of cryptography is always UI. ___ cryptography mailing list cryptography@randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography
