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After More Than a Decade, MSN Chat Authentication Is Documented (goo.gl)

Posted by timothy on from the documentation-is-nice dept.

An anonymous reader writes: After MSN Chat closed in 2003, and then again in 2006, some guy has finally documented the authentication system used — over a decade later! Developer Joshua Davison writes by way of explanation: I think it's important to document the challenge we (users, scripters, hackers) faced connecting to MSN Chat, which is the only known 'proper' implementation of IRCX v8.1 at this time. MSN Chat introduced a GateKeeper SASL authentication protocol, which implemented 'GateKeeper' and 'GateKeeperPassport' (not dissimilar to the widely documented NTLM authentication protocol, which was also implemented as NTLM, and NTMLPassport) The GateKeeper Security Support Provider (GKSSP) functioned in two ways; allowing a user to login with a Microsoft Account (Previously known as Microsoft Passport, .NET Passport, Microsoft Passport Network, and Windows Live ID), and also allowed guest authentication for users without, or not willing to use a Microsoft Account. While most users didn't need or want to understand how the protocol worked, there were many of us who did, and many that just preferred to use MSN Chat outside of the browser.

3 of 27 comments (clear)

  1. itâ(TM)s? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Can the new owners of Slashdot PLEASE fix this unicode/UTF-8/whatever problem? This is ridiculous.

  2. IMs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It's a pity these days that popular IMs have become completely propriety and do not work with open-source programs such as pidgin. MSN chat was quite nice but it's replacement skype is too bloated and resource hog for a simple chatting. Google chat was also quite nice until they turned it into hangouts and it also stopped working with open-source programs.

  3. Enough with the URL shorteners ... by gstoddart · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Look, seriously this isn't fucking Twitter ... stop using bloody URL shorteners ... https://goo.gl/uLqxCT

    If you can't post a proper link, don't publish the damned story.

    Why do we keep acting like we're supposed to trust third parties to know where we're going or to not want to monetize this fact?

    Oh, wait, between this and the fact that the summary has unicode artifacts, somehow I must be assuming timothy know how to be an "editor" ... what a quaint notion.

    --
    Lost at C:>. Found at C.