I'm sure I'm about the 1000'th person to try this, but I'm writing an MSN Messenger Client right now (in both Python and C# on Mac OS X and Windows). Writing the client is dirt-simple. There are lots of sources of information out on the web now, such as: Hypothetic.org's MSN Messenger Protocol and VenkyDude's practical implementation Although, between you, me, and the fence post, Venky's VB implementation is unreadable. Dude, learn to write maintainable code...
Anyway, my motivation for this is to add encryption. Care to help?
On Windows, I plan is to use OS certificate store support to store the asymetric public/private keys, write a Diffie-Hellman key exchange for the sessions keys and to write my own implementation of either TwoFish or Rijndael to encryption the actual message payloads. I realize writing one's own crypto implementations is a bit like being one's own doctor or lawyer, but this is a pedagogical experiment and I've always been a fan of crypto (you should see my library).
Posted by cbrown at July 6, 2003 8:56 AMYou are so hip, I can help with testing but otherwise I am useless to your grand design.
Posted by: Chef at July 9, 2003 12:40 PM