OTR: auto reconnect?

[ilf@…]

"Normal" people dis- and reconnect a lot. This breaks OTR sessions. Isn't there a way to auto-reconnect OTR sessions upon their rejoin?

[pesco]

this is a tricky topic because you cannot always tell whether the other party killed their client or Mallory interrupted the connection.

i remember spending some time thinking about it when i first wrote the OTR support, but cannot remember whether i came up with a definite answer back then.

there is definately a need for a solution here, because this does get annoying. but it needs some thinkthrough...

[anonymous]

Can't just disconnect because an unencrypted message will be sent next. Manual disconnect should occur if the other party connects using a non-otr client. They'll complain that they can't read. When they send that unencrypted message, the real problem is ​http://bugs.bitlbee.org/bitlbee/ticket/767

[ilf]

I thought about this again.

How about an option otr_auto_connect when a Buddy with a known OTR context joins?

Also, more often than not encrypted messages to offline buddies fail for me. BitlBee users seem to be the only ones not constantly dis- and reconnecting :) So if there was an option otr_auto_disconnect when they part (to go with the former), I would gladly enable that.

The solution for mallory interrupting the connection is not keeping the conenction, but verifyinf the fingerprint.

[anonymous]

I have a similar problem too. Me and my guys are all using BitlBee with otr. If I wrote with some of them and disconnect then from BitlBee all later send messages a always encrypted and unreadable. We are all using BitlBee 3.2.1.

[pesco]

There are multiple issues here.

One is bitlbee not disconnecting its OTR sessions when it loses context (quits) so the other end is confused by future plaintext messages. This should be fixed with #1019.

The second is related to the first; when a buddy loses context (i.e. quits) without sending an OTR disconnect, future encrypted messages to them will produce an error. This should occur less often after #1019. Also, in "opportunistic" mode, this should already trigger an automatic reconnect.

The last issue is a buddy disconnecting OTR (e.g. by quitting) and the bitlbee user trying to send an encrypted message. Bitlbee will refuse, saying "dis- or reconnect". This is mandated by OTR to avoid accidentally sending plaintext. An automatic reconnection in this case would be the topic of #961.