The second issue was that Tor Messenger had a ‘centralised client-server’ model making it vulnerable to metadata leaks without any solution on mitigating the risk. The original developers working on Instantbird have stopped maintaining the app and while Tor developers can still port the chat features to the Tor Messenger, the UI itself is no longer being developed. The first problem was that Tor Messenger was based on Instantbird where Tor developers could sit back and check the changes in the app to refine security and privacy without worrying about other aspects of the app. In the blog post, the organisation highlighted three main reasons for shutting down the development of the Messenger. The communication would itself be encrypted using OTR messaging. The advantage that Tor Messenger held over other chat clients was the fact that even though servers could log the metadata of users because of the client-server model, the route to the server would still be undisclosed because of the presence of Tor network. In addition to the privacy aspect of the Tor Messenger, Tor also wanted to make sure that the chat app supported a number of networks and protocols ranging from Jabber (XMPP), IRC, Google Talk, Facebook as well as Twitter, packing all this in an easy-to-use graphical interface while taking care of the privacy and security settings automatically without much inputs from the user.Īt its launch, The Tor Project tried to clarify the limitations of such an app by adding that it was meant to allow communication on existing social networks instead of making a dedicated chat platform that was different from all the existing messaging platforms. It also planned to use encrypted “one-to-one conversation” by adding and using the OTR (Off-the-Record) messaging. The company aimed that all the conversations that take place on the messenger would be secured by directing the traffic over the Tor network. Tor Messenger is a cross-platform chat app geared at communication and was first introduced in 2015.
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