MSN messenger

[therenegade]

Hey,I was just looking thru a few sites,and I saw some program being offered that could load multiple instances of MSN along with a few other features like changing the maximum length of the nicks and getting prohibited nicks..now..what I was thinking was,wouldnt you require the source code to make such changes?and MSN is NOT open source as much as I know lol

[MrLinus]

No. The protocol for it is wide open. Why would you need Opensource for MSN?

Thread moved to GCC.

[pwaring]

The MSN messenger program is not open source, and neither is the protocol really. However, it is possible to write a program that will follow the MSN protocol, as has indeed been done - Gaim is probably the best known example but there are other applications such as AMSN that do this as well.

I don't see why you would want to load multiple instances of MSN though, unless you had several accounts on it but even then what is the point? You can quite easily block people if you don't want them to contact you.

[SDK]

http://www.msgplus.net/

I think you're looking for Messenger Plus!

[meeeeeee]

Just a note about Messenger Plus!

It comes with a nasty amount of spyware, most notoriously the LOP spyware. Read this newsletter from SpywareInfo which describes it quite well.

[Raion]

hmm thanks meeeee, I have MSN Plus so now I guess I'll run S&D now..

[therenegade]

lol,thanks for the links guys,but no,I dont want messenger plus..what I wanted to know was,if it's not open source and the protocol isnt either,how can you make modifications to it?
And check out www.mess.be,it's got a few interesting msn addons,and S&D hasnt popped up with anything so I assume they're all safe

[pwaring]

It's not hugely difficult to reverse engineer a protocol, you just setup a packet sniffer between the machine running MSN and the Internet and basically examine the traffic passing to and from it*. You then make your program send the same traffic and the MSN servers won't be able to tell whether you are using the official client or one like Gaim.

*Okay, so it's a bit more complicated than that, but essentially what you are doing is analysising the packets sent to and from the client, working out (or making an educated guess) as to what they do and then copying them.