Introduction to Using MPGP with mircryption

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The MPGP Addon for mircryption allows you to safely share mircryption channel/chat keys over irc without worrying about these keys being intercepted.

Mircryption uses symmetric encryption to encrypt normal channel/chat conversations, which takes up very little extra bandwidth. The downside of this approach is the need for both parties to agree upon a channel keyphrase to use. In versions of mircryption prior to version 4, there was no safe way to agree upon a channel keyphrase without using a third party product, assuming that someone in the line of communication between two people talking (for example on the irc server or bnc, or isp), might be listening in to your conversation. Typically you would use other communications methods, such as email, or use a program like PGP to awkwardly copy and paste information in a channel.

This new addon, MPGP, provides a set of pgp-compatible functions that will automatically negotiate the exchange of symmetric and public (pgp) keys, in a safe and easy fashion, allowing you to establish secure conversations with strangers and friends alike.

Two basic levels of safety are provided, and you can choose the appropriate level as you see fit.

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The first level is the most convenient. You establish a secure public key exchange with any other person using mpgp, using anonymous keys. This approach is quite secure, but could theoretically be foiled by a sophisticated man-in-the-middle attack by an administrator of the irc server or on your isp, who wrote a program to intercept your conversation as it was happening, and decrypt and re-encrypt your conversations as they were occuring.

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The second level builds upon the first, and allows you to use non-anonymous (permanent) pgp keys acquired through processes external to irc to exchange channel keyphrases and information In this way, you can do a one-time exchange of non-anonymous public keys through a keyserver, online forum, or email, and thereafter be able to exchange mircryption keys and other information with the secure knowledge that only the original owner of the public key can read your messages. This second level also affords additional security, allowing you to authenticate that the person you are talking to is in fact who they say they are, regardless of their current nick or ip.

Note that all of these procedures take place in plain text over normal irc communication, and thus can be used with firewalls and bncs without ever revealing your ip. However, note that sending long text over normal irc is very slow due to the need to avoid being kicked by servers for flooding, and it can take several seconds to exchange keys and send messages.