Chat, end to end encrypted ?

Discussion of features in Mozilla Thunderbird
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Ninho
Posts: 127
Joined: February 3rd, 2004, 8:53 am

Chat, end to end encrypted ?

Post by Ninho »

Happy new year, everybody !

I've searched the forum for subj., found only old (ca 2013) reports of no such thing as end-to-end encryption (like, OTR) implemented in Thunderbird either natively or as pug-ins :=(

What is the current status as of 2017, please ? Failing that, what is your suggestion for simple, one-to-one encryted, real time chat between trusted partners ?
Windows or, hopefully, cross-platform. TIA !
Ninho
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tanstaafl
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Joined: July 30th, 2003, 5:06 pm

Re: Chat, end to end encrypted ?

Post by tanstaafl »

Not on the developers radar as far as I can tell. I suggest you use either Signal on a Android or iOS cellphone or CryptoCat under Windows

https://signal.org/
https://crypto.cat/

http://arstechnica.com/security/2017/01 ... ackdoored/ discusses the backdoor in WhatsApp. "Tobias Boelter, a Ph.D. candidate researching cryptography and security at the University of California at Berkeley, told the Guardian that the failure to obtain a sender's explicit permission before using the new key challenged the often-repeated claim that not even WhatsApp or its owner Facebook can read encrypted messages sent through the service." "Boelter went on to contrast the way WhatsApp handles new keys with the procedure used by Signal, a competing messaging app that uses the same encryption protocol. Signal allows a sender to verify a new key before using it."

https://www.eff.org/node/82654 is a secure messaging scorecard from the EFF. However, its too out of date to be useful. For example, Cryptocat was re-released in March 2016 and the scorecard doesn't mention the recently discovered backdoor in Whatsapp.

http://krebsonsecurity.com/ and https://www.schneier.com/ are useful security blogs if you want to search for posts/discussions about any program you're interested in. The Wilders Security Forums at https://www.wilderssecurity.com/ are also useful.
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