The Internet is a notorious breeding ground for people who want to invade your privacy, and instant messaging is increasingly under attack from snoopers. ScatterChat represents a great way to make sure that your private conversations stay private, by allowing you to connect securely through Gaim encryption technology.
Although it takes quite a while to install the application, largely taken up by generating the encryption key, once it's running it requires little technical knowledge and operates in much the same way as an ordinary IM client. At the centre of the program is the Buddy List, which helps you effectively manage your contacts and send messages at the click of a name. The program supports all the major IM networks and despite the fact that the encryption nibbles at your connection a little more than a normal client, it represents a great way to stay in touch and stay safe.
from http://scatterchat.en.softonic.com,
http://scatterchat.en.softonic.com/download
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Scatter Chat is “a free, open source application designed to facilitate secure and private real-time communication over the Internet. ” Scatter Chat is an instant messaging client based on Gaim (now known as Pidgin), written by J. Salvatore Testa II, and released at the H.O.P.E. Number Six conference in New York City on July 22, 2006 . It lets users connect to messaging networks such as AIM and Yahoo, but also allows to communicate with others using Scatter Chat over these networks under the veil of encryption.
Scatter Chat is intended for non-technical activists and dissidents communicating through Internet servers subverted by oppressive governments. It is also useful in free countries whose governments are trying to better national security by spying on its citizens.
Hacktivismo is an offshoot of CULT OF THE DEAD COW (cDc), whose beliefs include access to information as a basic human right. It was founded in 1999. The group's beliefs are described fully in The Hacktivismo Declaration, which seeks to apply the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to the Internet. Oxblood Ruffin, the director of Hacktivismo, has argued forcefully against definitions of hacktivism that include web defacements or denial-of-service attacks. Hacktivismo has also authored its own software license agreement, the Hacktivismo Enhanced-Source Software License Agreement (HESSLA). The HESSLA prohibits use or modification that would violate human rights or introduce features that spy on the user.
Reviews
Its security features include “perfect forward secrecy, immunity from replay attacks, and limited resistance to traffic analysis, ” all armored through a pro-actively secure design. According to lead developer J. Salvatore Testa II, “the anonymity and encryption that Scatter Chat provides ensures that both the identities and messages of activists remain a mystery, even to well-funded totalitarian governments.” James Thornton in his review at Softonic affirms that Scatter Chat, although it “drains more bandwidth than most IM clients and takes a while to set up”, “represents a great way to make sure that your private conversations stay private, by allowing you to connect securely through Gaim encryption technology” .
On the other hand, Steven J. Murdoch in his article “Protocol design is hard — Flaws in Scatter Chat “ identified several non-critical protocol flaws that introduce a vulnerability within certain threat models, which are capability probing and spoofing attack, lack of forward secrecy, and collision attacks. Murdoch suggests that, while the new OTR-protocol –based version arrives, “a similar result can be achieved with GAIM, and official OTR plugin then configuring them to use Tor, albeit without secure file transfer.”
Links
“Hacktivismo: News”, n.d. http://www.hacktivismo.com/news/.
“Scatter Chat Release at HOPE Number Six - YouTube”, n.d. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WX3RM87OXlc.
“Scatterchat – Alive or Dead? Portable?? | Flyninja Dot Net”, n.d. http://www.flyninja.net/?p=149.
Edge, Jake. “Scatter Chat for encrypted instant messaging [LWN.net]”, July 26, 2006. http://lwn.net/Articles/192924/.
“Hacktivismo Declaration - Wikilivres”, n.d. http://wikilivres.info/wiki/Hacktivismo_Declaration.
“Hacktivismo - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia”, n.d. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacktivismo.
“Hacktivismo: News”, n.d. http://www.hacktivismo.com/news/.
“Scatter Chat - Download”, n.d. http://scatterchat.en.softonic.com/.
“Light Blue Touchpaper » Blog Archive » Protocol design is hard — Flaws in Scatter Chat”, August 11, 2006. http://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2006/08/11/protocol-design-is-hard-%E2%80%94-flaws-in-scatterchat/
from http://huongngo.com/betterspeech/index.php?title=Scatter_Chat_%28by_Hacktivismo%29
