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Excuse blatant Plug :) When we built Umbrella, we had in mind the example of Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras meeting Edwards Snowden. Initially Snowden tried

Excuse blatant Plug :) When we built Umbrella, we had in mind the example of Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras meeting Edwards Snowden. Initially Snowden tried to make contact but Greenwald found the process of digital security too cumbersome and awkward. Poitras however was more persistant. Also, when Greenwald and Poitras went to Hong Kong, they knew little or nothing about physical security. We wanted to change that and make it easier to have everything a journalist like Glenn Greenwald would need to do to meet a source in their pocket - everything from sending a secure email to meeting a source in a high risk location where they may be under surveillance from a regime which may threaten their vital work. So we launched an open source Android app called Umbrella - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.secfirst.umbrella https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.secfirst.u... https://github.com/securityfirst/Umbrella_android https://github.com/securityfirst/Umbrella_android It's still a long way from being perfect but hopefully will make the life of future Laura Poitras, just a little bit easier.

junto 11y ago
While I think your cause is noble, can you really trust Android, and even if you can trust Android, can you really trust the baseband firmware?
- secfirstmd 11y ago
  No. But as we all know, there is practically no firmware which can be trusted. I think the issue is always about measuring risk versus the threat level. Journalists that we train every day all over the world are always going to carry out high risk activities. The temptation is always to try to build a tool for the most extreme threat model and in the process, bypass the most common threats - leaving the average journalist with even less protection. Indeed, we increasingly find far much focus amongst our trainees on high level NSA Prism the stuff while little consideration of the basics - passwords, who has access to information in your own office, dealing with physical surveillance etc etc - all of which oir experience has taught us is far more common security hazard to journalists.
nickpsecurity 11y ago
Then you failed unless you're talking about defending against people that aren't hackers or have no resources. Going against nation-states, your foundation and security at each layer are probed for weaknesses. Any complex, mainstream platform or application they usually have 0-days for already. So, you have to avoid all that by default. Here's a list of methods of knocking out risk and where to apply them: http://pastebin.com/y3PufJ0V http://pastebin.com/y3PufJ0V You gotta go back to the drawing board. Also, best to leverage components you know they can't beat or have trouble with. GPG and Tor are only two I remember them mentioning by name in leaks as stopping them from reading and tracing respectively. Build a user-friendly tool around that or use its key code in your app to get leverage. Avoid anything they hack easily.

junto 11y ago

While I think your cause is noble, can you really trust Android, and even if you can trust Android, can you really trust the baseband firmware?

secfirstmd 11y ago
No. But as we all know, there is practically no firmware which can be trusted. I think the issue is always about measuring risk versus the threat level. Journalists that we train every day all over the world are always going to carry out high risk activities. The temptation is always to try to build a tool for the most extreme threat model and in the process, bypass the most common threats - leaving the average journalist with even less protection. Indeed, we increasingly find far much focus amongst our trainees on high level NSA Prism the stuff while little consideration of the basics - passwords, who has access to information in your own office, dealing with physical surveillance etc etc - all of which oir experience has taught us is far more common security hazard to journalists.

nickpsecurity 11y ago

Then you failed unless you're talking about defending against people that aren't hackers or have no resources. Going against nation-states, your foundation and security at each layer are probed for weaknesses. Any complex, mainstream platform or application they usually have 0-days for already. So, you have to avoid all that by default. Here's a list of methods of knocking out risk and where to apply them: http://pastebin.com/y3PufJ0V http://pastebin.com/y3PufJ0V You gotta go back to the drawing board. Also, best to leverage components you know they can't beat or have trouble with. GPG and Tor are only two I remember them mentioning by name in leaks as stopping them from reading and tracing respectively. Build a user-friendly tool around that or use its key code in your app to get leverage. Avoid anything they hack easily.