Florian Zeitz wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Jonathan Schleifer schrieb:
Florian Zeitz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

If Jonathan has any other attacks in mind or found a way to apply this
technique to XMPP I'd really like to hear about it.
I'm not saying I found an attack, but currently, an attacker would know
how long the message is _AND_ how long it has been typed. I could
imagine that this may make an attack easier.


I personally doubt this. While you learn the length of the message, the
how long it has been typed is difficult to figure out:
http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs588-fall2001/projects/reports/team4.pdf
cites difficulties due to network latency.
In the case of typing notifications there is additionally a delay until
a "not typing any longer" event is sent or a unknown pause before
someone presses enter (s/he might reread his message, might just press
Enter immediately, might press Enter by accident in the middle of a
message, etc.).
And as stated before you can also delete characters while "typing".
All this factors make getting a valid value for how long the message has
been typed near impossible in real life IMHO.

I tend to agree. At least, I would be curious to see if anyone finds a real attack in this way.

/psa

Attachment: smime.p7s
Description: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature

Reply via email to