[tor-dev] RFC: Tor Messenger Alpha

[Sukhbir Singh]

Hi,

Tor Messenger is an instant messaging client currently under
development. It is designed to make connections using the Tor network
and will therefore be a valuable piece in the privacy-enhancing software
toolkit (web: Tor Browser, email: Thunderbird + TorBirdy, chat: Tor
Messenger.) 

Based on the Instantbird IM client [0], Tor Messenger:

 - sends all traffic over Tor,
 - uses Off-the-Record (OTR) encryption [1] of conversations by default,
 - can be used with a wide variety of chat networks,
 - has an easy-to-use graphical user interface localized into multiple
   languages.

Some more information about Tor Messenger (and why we picked
Instantbird) can be found on the wiki [2].

Current Status

We have Tor Messenger bundles for Linux (32-bit and 64-bit) with OTR
(using ctypes-otr [4]) and Tor support (Tor binary and Tor Launcher
included), among other privacy settings. We are doing automated builds
of Tor Messenger using rbm [5] (thanks to Nicolas Vigier).

@@@     WARNING: NOT READY FOR PUBLIC USE. DO NOT DISTRIBUTE.      @@@

Bundles

Linux (32-bit)
    https://people.torproject.org/~sukhbir/tor-messenger-0.0.4/tor-messenger-0.0.4-linux-i686.tar.xz
    
Linux (64-bit)
    https://people.torproject.org/~sukhbir/tor-messenger-0.0.4/tor-messenger-0.0.4-linux-x86_64.tar.xz

sha256sum
    https://people.torproject.org/~sukhbir/tor-messenger-0.0.4/sha256sums.txt
    https://people.torproject.org/~sukhbir/tor-messenger-0.0.4/sha256sums.txt.asc
    
The bundles are signed with my key (Sukhbir Singh; 0xB297B391).

Extract the bundles and then run: ./start-tor-messenger.

This is an early release and there may be serious privacy leaks and
other issues -- please DO NOT recommend Tor Messenger to end users; this
release is only for developers and advanced users who would like to help
us with testing but understand the risks involved with using alpha
software.  Do not ignore this warning.

We will try to have a monthly release cycle leading up to a stable
release by July 2015.

@@@     WARNING: NOT READY FOR PUBLIC USE. DO NOT DISTRIBUTE.      @@@

Feedback

With this release, we invite feedback not limited to anonymity leaks,
usability issues, feature requests and suggestions for improvement.
Please submit your feedback using the bug tracker [3] (select the "Tor
Messenger" component).  You can also talk to us on this mailing list or
on IRC.

(No seriously, don't use the bundles for any serious communication yet.)

[0] - http://instantbird.com/
[1] - https://otr.cypherpunks.ca/
[2] - https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/TorMessenger
[3] - https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/newticket
[4] - https://github.com/arlolra/ctypes-otr
[5] - http://rbm.boklm.eu/

Thanks,

Arlo Breault and Sukhbir Singh
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