OTR Encrypted IM¶

What is OTR?

OTR (or Off-the-Record) Messaging allows you to have private conversations over instant messaging by providing:

Encryption
No one else can read your instant messages.
Authentication
You are assured the correspondent is who you think it is.
Deniability
The messages you send do not have digital signatures that are checkable by a third party. Anyone can forge messages after a conversation to make them look like they came from you. However, during a conversation, your correspondent is assured the messages he sees are authentic and unmodified.
Perfect forward secrecy
If you lose control of your private keys, no previous conversation is compromised.

Ubuntu/Debian instructions¶

OTR is supported by a variety of different clients
Pidgin is a popuplar cross platform client.
please see here for more client info

(previous versions of ubuntu merely need to install pidgin and pidgin-otr)

• How setup pidgin/otr on ubuntu 12.04 beta
  

  apt-get install pidgin

• Download the libotr and pidgin-otr from the cypherpunks.ca page
• apt-get install libgcrypt-dev
• Go into the libotr
  

  ./configure --prefix=/usr && make && sudo make install

• Go into the pidgin-otr
  

  ./configure --prefix=/usr && make && sudo make install