GSoC: Week Six

These reports keep slipping further and further into the week—I need to fix that.

Major bugfixes this week, mostly improving error handling and patching up presence leaks. The one visible change is that I’ve completed SAS support, as can be seen in the screenshot. (yes, the dialog is… verbose. if you have any suggestions for cleaning it up, please share them.)

SAS (short authentication strings) serve the same purpose as a PGP or SSL fingerprint. They all allow you to confirm that you’re communicating directly with the person or computer that you think you are.

The first time you connect to an SSH server you get something very similar. You’re supposed to check with the server’s administrator and make sure the fingerprint you see matches the one ey’s got—few people do this. It’s hard to blame them, it’s a gigantic hexadecimal number.

The difference with a SAS is that it’s, well, short. The version specified in XEP-0116 is only 5 characters long. Hopefully this will encourage people to verify it, rather than just ignoring it.