[OTR-dev] private messages on dbus

[Dimitris Glynos]

On 02/28/2012 12:43 AM, Paul Wouters wrote:
> I am still a bit confused how serious this issue really is. If you can
> read as the uid of the user, you can already read the OTR keys from
> disk. Now PFS will prevent decrypting, but whether you listen in on dbus
> or the X11 channels doesnt really matter much. So I see value in
> protecting the pidgin process from reading OTR materials outside
> pidgin-otr, and hardening pidgin against network input, I see less value
> into closing the dbus from the user for themselves.

Paul the real problem here is broadcasting sensitive info
over DBUS. If the sender chooses not to log this info
so that they don't end up on the disk, there is no way
for pidgin to enforce the same security policy to the
3rd party (possibly unrelated) apps that sit on the
other end of DBUS. Such an app might accidentally log these
messages because it cannot qualify that they were meant to be
private.

Hope this helps,

Dimitris