On December 11, 2015 1:19:20 AM EST, "U.Mutlu" <u...@mutluit.com> wrote:
>
>So, my question is: does OTR protect against impersonation and MITM
>in the AKE phase? Or is it a TOFU protocol like SSH?
>

This is what the "verify" steps are for. You trade a secret key with someone 
and ask them to enter it, or you ask them a question only they could know. 
That's the idea, at least. In practice I've found that these options are 
unusable, because in the second your partner needs to spell their answer 
exactly as you intended and they always miss a capital or a period, and in the 
first you need an out of band channel or to meet up first.

The third verification option, just accepting blindly, makes OTR a TOFU 
protocol.  This is what I do most of the time, even when my friends' clients 
change (and now you all know to MITM me, I guess).  Or, if you do meet up in 
person, you can just verify fingerprints instead of trading a key to verify 
later. Xabber even lets you trade fingerprints via QR code.
-- 
Nick Guenther
4B Joint Stats/CS
University of Waterloo
_______________________________________________
OTR-dev mailing list
OTR-dev@lists.cypherpunks.ca
http://lists.cypherpunks.ca/mailman/listinfo/otr-dev

Reply via email to