Secure IM

Can anyone suggest a secure IM client?  One that's encrypted?

Define secure.... Secure from whom?

Have you tried this?

Encrypted over the wire (ie, secure from eavesdroppers)

French.about.com?

armbrat wrote:

Encrypted over the wire (ie, secure from eavesdroppers)

AIM supports encrypting, but I don't trust it.

There are various Jabber implementations, as well as Secure IRC.

hamachi

it is used to created a very simple password protected vpn and yes the connections are encrypter. built in is an IM client, so both of you install it, one of you make a server and the other one connects to the server, then you use the built in IM features and you are golden.

it is also very nice to network two computers nicely and protected.

Hmm... there's two levels of encryption.

Client-to-Server

The server knows what you said, but traffic between you and the server is encrypted.  Google Talk and many other Jabber implementations support this.  AIM supports this.

Client-to-Client

You and your buddies swap public keys, and messages are encrypted to the recipient.  The server just relays messages, but cannot snoop.

Some Jabber clients support this too, like Psi (it uses GPG for the encryption layer)

EDIT: W3bbo scooped me

armbrat wrote:

Encrypted over the wire (ie, secure from eavesdroppers)

As I said, from who? Your boss? Your wife? The US government? The little devil that sits on your shoulder and whispers things in your ear?

Try Trillian.  It's also multi-client and can access AIM, MSN, Yahoo, etc.  But it only supports encryption on the networks that allow it or from trillian-to-trillian.

There are also a few other suggestions here:
http://www.ceruleanstudios.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=530866

databyte wrote:

Try Trillian.  It's also multi-client and can access AIM, MSN, Yahoo, etc

Watch with that though because AIM just blocked the TOC 1.0 protocol so anyone using that will be dropped. MSN and Yahoo! I can imagine MSN may do the same thing to try to control the viri and such that float around on it and Yahoo! may not though because of honestly being such a small userbase they don't need to modify the protocol as often.

Just a few words of wisdom

Hello,

armbrat wrote:

Can anyone suggest a secure IM client?  One that's encrypted?

You can try Brosix www.brosix.com. It is a corporate instant messenger built with security in mind. It encrypts all the traffic and whenever possible  establishes direct connection between you and the buddy you want to excahnge files, video, voice etc.

Brosix.com offers you to build your own Instant Messaging network. But if you don't need an IM network, then you can use their free public network www.brosix.net This is the free version of the corporate messenger, with all of its features, but it is running on a separate network opened for everyone.

Best regards,
ST

I've used SimpLite http://www.secway.fr/us/products/simplite_msn/home.php with much ease and success.

Secure IRC is crap, unless you mean SILC, which just looks like IRC. But there are no real graphical clients for it.

If you want secure IM, get your peers and you to use Pidgin with the Off-the-Record plugin.

You can set GMail to use SSL, and then use their chat thing.

Isn't Skype encrypted?

msemack said:

Isn't Skype encrypted?

Yes, it protects from casual eavesdropping and I imagine is secure from MITM too, but they let nation's police forces tap into their comms, so they've either got a backdoor or the encryption is only to their switchboard servers and not end-to-end.

I'd try Skype or Pidgin's Off The Record plugin.

 

http://www.cypherpunks.ca/otr/