Re: [gentoo-user] Network message encryption

[Xianwen Chen]

Hi Mike,

On 8/17/09, Mike Kazantsev <mk.fraggod@×××××.com> wrote:
>
> I'm using gajim with TLS-enabled (transport-level encryption) connection
> to the servers and built-in GPG plugin to encrypt messages, containing
> some auth info, which I occasionally have to pass.
> I believe pidgin also had support for such feature via one of the
> standard plugins.

Thanks for the information. I've checked the wikipedia page of gajim.
It's very interesting, however, I'm not a jabber user. But I'll check
it again if any friend of mine is using jabber, since the GPG plugin
is very attractive to me.

Best regards,

Wen

>
> TLS is widely-deployed on XMPP (jabber) servers, but encryption ends at
> the server in question, so it can intercept / mangle the messages, so it
> might be good idea to prefer large and reliable servers to
> possibly-compromised or malicious small ones.
> Furthermore, in case of XMPP, your (source) server is free to pass the
> message in unencrypted form to destination server, so message can be
> caught by any IP-sniffers on the route.
> Then there's also remote client connection, which can be unencrypted
> (no TLS/SSL) and likewise intercepted on TCP/IP level.
>
> GPG encryption requires clients on both sides to support it, but has
> benefit that all cryptographic operations are happening on client
> machines, so server (or any intermediate host) is unable to spoof
> conversation, provided the encryption (GPG) keys aren't compromised.
>
> --
> Mike Kazantsev // fraggod.net
>


-- 
Xianwen Chen

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Email: cxi000@××××××××.no; xianwen.chen@×××××.com