Blowfish Encryption¶

• required version >=0.7

Introduction¶

Blowfish can be used to encrypt messages between 2 persons in query, messages in channel and the topic. In Quassel all messages will be de-/encrypted on core. So it is highly recommend to setup SSL in case of you are not running monolithic client.

Commands¶

a) setting a key for a user or channel

Usage

/setkey <nick|channel> <key>

b) deleting a key for a user or channel

Usage

/delkey <nick|channel>

c) show key for a user or channel (since 0.8)

Usage

/showkey <nick|channel>

d) Automatically negotiate a key with the target (DH-1080 key exchange; since 0.9.0)

Usage

/keyx <nick|channel>

Build Instructions¶

Blowfish support for Quassel depends on QCA (Qt Cryptographic Architecture) library. It is needed to compile your core/monolithic client with crypt compile option.

... -DWITH_CRYPT=ON ...

For detailed build instructions have at look general build instructons.

Troubleshooting¶

• If Quassel crashes (like #1045) when tries to send a message to a <nick|channel> where a blowfish encryption key has been set with /setkey <nick|channel> <key>, you have to install qca-ossl.
• To use blowfish in debian you might need the "libqca2-plugin-ossl" package. "sudo apt-get install libqca2-plugin-ossl"