Encrypt Your AIM Conversations
Do you use AOL Instant Messenger to communicate with your friends, co-workers and family? Did you know that all of the conversations you have appear as plain-text on a network and the Internet?
The newest version of AIM for Windows (5.2+) allows for the use of security certificates as a way of encrypting your instant messenger conversations. AOL wants to charge you $15 a year to use their certificate.
I like free things and that’s why I highly recommend you download your security certificate from aimencrypt.com. Completely free and allows you to have encrypted conversations with your “buddies” (as long as they also have a certificate installed). Setup/Installation takes all of three minutes and can really protect you and your friends. Again, the key is that not only you have to have a certificate installed, but your “buddies” do too if you want to have an encrypted conversation. Once your certificate is installed, a little padlock will show up next to your name indicating that you are able to have secured/encrypted conversations.
More information can be found at thescreensavers.com
This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 30th, 2003 at 2:39 pm and is filed under technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
March 26th, 2004 at 8:17 pm
AIM Encrypt is a very insecure way to do encryption in AIM. You can do encryption with OpenSSL securely instead.
Creating certificates with OpenSSL on Linux/Unix platforms are quite easy. But if you’re using Windows, not all hope is lost.
I’ve looked everywhere for instructions to create your own self-signed certificate, and since there isn’t really a page out there that did it, I wrote my own.
Here are some instructions to create your own self-signed certificate for AIM. You don’t need anything special, I put up the binary that allows you to do it with OpenSSL. You can use any OpenSSL binary, I provide instructions on how to use your own binary as well. If the instructions scare you, there will be a program provided that can do it all for you. It asks you for some info you want in your certificate, and with a few clicks, you’ll be on your way.
Then, after you create the .p12 package that AIM accepts, just import it and tell me what you think ;)
URL is at:
http://secure.sylikc.net:8080/self_signed/
or just http://sylikc.net/?secure, and find the HOWTO on the bottom.
Now then you won’t have to use AIMEncrypt.com’s certificate, just DIY.