[throwaway-571]

What Pidgin user(s) could possibly be worth that much?

Are there some activist or terrorist monitored by a 3 letter agency that is computer literate enough to use Linux + pidgin to try and keep away from prying eyes (or just plain ethical reasons)? Or would the exploit end up being targeted at some foreign government that has standardized on Pidgin?

[upofadown]

Pidgin is the IM client provided in Tails Linux. In practice that makes it the OTR over XMPP client provided in Tails Linux.

I suspect that this use also causes those that are not doing Tails to use Pidgin on Windows to communicate with those that are. After all, Pidgin is in Tails. It must be secure.

[normaler]

There are many government organizations which are still using XMPP and the Clients they usw are most likely based on libpurle the vasic library for pidgin and similar clients (Adamantium on MacOS).

[paulryanrogers]

Adium?

[kilroy123]

Maybe someone who's holding a LOT of crypto?

[meowface]

Maybe. But if you're holding a LOT of crypto, it's very unwise to store the private keys on an internet-connected computer you also use for instant messaging and other things.

(I'm sure plenty of people do actually do that; just lamenting the fact rather than expressing skepticism at the plausibility.)

[VRay]

I left like $80 worth of crypto on a computer that my nephew was using for gaming online, and only remembered when I realized that it had grown to be worth over $1000

Fortunately I recovered it before any of the virus-riddled crapware he downloaded noticed it was there, haha

[kjs3]

Either seems plausible to me, especially since US$100k chump change for a TLA or other state sponsored actor.