Secure communication: Encrypted instant messaging

auttie · Sun Jun 05, 2005 2:55 am

yes.. I choose console silc. thats the best bet.

MargaretThatcher · Wed Jun 08, 2005 1:33 am

Just tried compiling the silc toolkit. Get a bizarre compiler error. Shame, because I'd like to run silky and also host a server. I'll have a go at connecting when I get this sorted.

auttie · Wed Jun 08, 2005 2:48 am

what errors are you getting and what distro are you running? silc requires a select group of libraries.. if your running freebsd or debian, I know you can use there ports database.. to install, see if your distro has a ports database, and search for silc.. a number of them carry it allready, also post your errors here.. I have installed silc on a number of different operating systems maybe I can help.

loki · guinea pig

<bleep>

MargaretThatcher · Wed Jun 08, 2005 3:38 am

It's an actual error within the GCC compiler. Can't find any other mention of it. Nothing to do with silc. I'm rolling back to an older version than that which comes with my distribution.

MargaretThatcher · Wed Jun 08, 2005 4:16 am

Yep, there is no package for my distro. Got the toolkit to compile but no joy running silky. Gaim doesn't display the silc plugin despite detecting silc at configuration and make. However, I can use the silc client OK.

This is with latest toolkit 1.0 etc.

auttie · Wed Jun 08, 2005 4:42 am

MargaretThatcher · Sat Jun 11, 2005 6:32 am

Changed distro since I last played with SILC. I can only get the godawful SILC client to compile with the latest version - not gaim nor silky. gaim will run with the 0.9.12 SILC release but is buggy and bloated and reveals your real username to all and sundry. silky won't run at all.

I am not wasting any more of my life playing with this. Too buggy and unfriendly. The clients are crap and the project looks underresourced to do what it needs.

I think jabber over TOR is the way to go. Simple and reliable. Choice of clients, good encryption, anonymous.

lemuralia · Sun Jun 12, 2005 2:50 pm

An interesting paper for you TOR users:

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/gd216/TorTA.pdf

MargaretThatcher · Tue Jun 14, 2005 4:23 am

lemuralia: thanks for that pdf.

Basically, it is proposing that TOR may be compromised with less resources than previously supposed. I.e. connections can be traced more easily through the network (but still, not easily). I still trust it more than JAP: it encrypts the connection from PC to prevent ISP snooping and also does a pretty good job at disguising connections. Is there anything better?

lemuralia · Wed Jun 15, 2005 3:05 am

maggie: private darknets with TCP/IP steganography would be more secure than TOR imho.

MargaretThatcher · Wed Jun 15, 2005 3:22 am

Now, if synthetikal could run an i2p node, I would be very happy.