7 ms·

New "Surveillance-Proof" App To Secure Communications Has Governments Nervous

127 points by kunle 14y ago

mapgas88 14y ago
If people are interested in this type of thing for Android, I recommend checking out the RedPhone and TextSecure apps. They're free to use, all the source code is GPLv3 on GitHub, and RedPhone already has global calling coverage. The apps have been translated into 15 languages, and in my experience they're really dead simple to use.
- aw3c2 14y ago
  I really hope that TextSecure will be ported to iOS.
  - ConstantineXVI 14y ago
    Stop hoping and port it, then. The protocol[0] is based on OTR, which already has at least one Cocoa implementation in Adium. AFAIK you can't directly tap into SMS on iOS, so you'll either need to do a lot of copy/pasting or run across your own messaging network. [0] https://github.com/WhisperSystems/TextSecure/wiki/Protocol https://github.com/WhisperSystems/TextSecure/wiki/Protocol
rohern 14y ago
It seems to me the way to get around this (for the nervous government) is to attack the iphone itself and capture keystrokes, nay?
- ntaylor 14y ago
  > If authorities wanted to intercept the communications of a person using Silent Circle, it is likely they’d have to resort to deploying Trojan-style tools—infecting targeted devices with spyware to covertly record communications before they become encrypted.
mayneack 14y ago
Really wish I could sign up and then hold my free month until after the Android app comes out. Guess I'll just keep checking back (or assume that when it happens, it will be mentioned here)
- moxie 14y ago
  You might check out RedPhone and TextSecure (I'm one of the developers). They're in the Play Store and on GitHub.
- ahelwer 14y ago
  How do you get a free month? This looks like it'd be fun to play around with. Edit: Somehow didn't see the giant "subscribe now and receive a free 30-day subscription" on the homepage.
chrisballinger 14y ago
It's good to hear they will be releasing the source! A tool like this would be rather insane to use by anyone serious about security without the ability to inspect the source. The article states it will be under a "noncommercial open-source license".
- Cogito 14y ago
  I'm interested if they will release enough to reproduce the entire system, or only the client aspect. It's apparently using client-client protocols, but there is obviously some level of discoverability provided by the network that is a monetisation avenue for the company.
dzuc 14y ago
Janke assembled what he calls an “all-star team”: Phil Zimmerman, a recent inductee to the Internet’s Hall of Fame, who in 1991 invented PGP encryption, still considered the standard for email security. Jon Callas, the man behind Apple’s whole-disk encryption (which is used to secure hard drives in Macs across the world), became Silent Circle’s chief technology officer. Yeah... that might actually qualify as "all-star"
- notimetorelax 14y ago
  I'm not familiar with the specifics, why do you think they are not real all-star?
  - samstave 14y ago
    I think he is being serious, not facetious...
    - notimetorelax 14y ago
      Quotes confused me a little.
      - gagege 14y ago
        And the ellipsis.
- rdl 14y ago
  There are actually a few more developers at Silent Circle who are just as good as those two, so it really is an amazingly strong team.
bluedanieru 14y ago
> It will store only the email address, 10-digit Silent Circle phone number, username, and password of each customer. Surely this is not correct.
- ntaylor 14y ago
  I'm sure that it will be encrypted.
- joshAg 14y ago
  I hope this is just a miscommunication about what is actually stored (salted hash instead of plaintext).
- JshWright 14y ago
  I'm the guy who wrote the accounts management platform for Silent Circle. Rest assured, passwords are stored as PBKDF2 hashes. (I realize bcrypt is popular around here, but when it comes to crypto stuff, standards are a good thing, most of the time...) edit: s/DK/KD/
  - na85 14y ago
    How much computing power would it take to brute-force one of those hashes? We know NSA has gargantuan parallel processing capabilities.
    - bluedanieru 14y ago
      I think it's far more likely they'd find a way to break the hash function and not tell anyone about it.
    - JshWright 14y ago
      We tune the hash iterations to take a reasonably long amount of time on our modern hardware. That said, a dedicated and well funded attack on a single hash could certainly crack it in a relatively short period of time (which is why we protect the hashes as if they were cleartext passwords...)
zwass 14y ago
The problem is, anyone who is serious about security is going to need to read the source and compile the binary they load onto their phone. Nontechnical people aren't going to be able to do that.
- hollerith 14y ago
  A tech guy can ask a non-tech guy if he can examine his phone. If the binary on the phone differs from any binary the tech guy can get by compiling clean source code, he can raise questions. This is how a group of tech guys who are in communication with each other can protect the privacy of a much larger population of non-tech guys.
  - xyzzy123 14y ago
    Right; if you don't understand the technology (or like most of us, haven't taken the time to comprehensively review it) you have to rely on social proof.
- drivebyacct2 14y ago
  Well with those two sentences you've pretty much ensured that this is never, ever possible. You'd have to have a trust system from the silicon up, signed bootloader, hypervisor, no exploits, etc to guarantee that the system you're booting is executing the binaries you think it is. At some point "good enough" has to be enough. Okay, you built the APK, how do you know I don't control the VM and just swap out that JIT'd method with one that I've altered? (Repeat this until you get all the way back to the initial power-up)
  - acuozzo 14y ago
    Ah, good old "Reflections on Trusting Trust".
- xyzzy123 14y ago
  Thinking about this really hard, I'm not sure how nontechnical people can ever be sure that they can trust technical artifacts?
SparrowOS 14y ago
God says... 28:23 Ye shall offer these beside the burnt offering in the morning, which is for a continual burnt offering. 28:24 After this manner ye shall offer daily, throughout the seven days, the meat of the sacrifice made by fire, of a sweet savour unto the LORD: it shall be offered beside the continual burnt offering, and his drink offering. 28:25 And on the seventh day ye shall have an holy convocation; ye shall do no servile work. 28:26 Also in the day of the firstfruits, when ye bring a new meat offering unto the LORD, after your weeks be out, ye shall have an holy convocation; ye shall do no servile work: 28:27 But ye shall offer the burnt offering for a sweet savour unto the LORD; two young bullocks, one ram, seven lambs of the first year; 28:28 And their meat offering of flour mingled with oil, three tenth deals unto one bullock, two tenth deals unto one ram, 28:29 A several tenth deal unto one lamb, throughout the seven lambs; 28:30 And one kid of the goats, to make an atonement for you. ---- It's obvious animal sacrifices are silly, but it's the thought that counts. IT'S THE THOUGHT THAT COUNTS!!! You fucken morons, do something! http://www.sparrowos.com/Wb/Apps/AfterEgypt/Comics/ http://www.sparrowos.com/Wb/Apps/AfterEgypt/Comics/ http://www.sparrowos.com/Wb/Accts/TS/Wb2/Hymns.html http://www.sparrowos.com/Wb/Accts/TS/Wb2/Hymns.html God says... taste repay wrinkle plan Righteousness forgetfulness Courage appointments forgivest commandment Sometimes mortality congregations commander pleased sumptuously Who periods commendeth let's infants force seat perils indulgent stories hay torture blesses wert praise esteeming umm exclude prey Themselves Love glances malice prisoner recited begin habit A act reproved sick lattice founded illusion walking dispel conceived wonderful depressing obscure fiercest Brazil students do_not_disturb chastely stones bond need estimate enlisted fairly transgression preferable mutually fore-perceiving glass fly pains son's beyond exult PUBLIC shops MEDIUM faultfinders blew fuller for define *This alluring
Fando 14y ago
Wow I would love to learn the details of this technology.
- ntaylor 14y ago
  It sounds like a fairly standard shared key encryption. Basically, each user has a unique private key and all users share a common public key. When the data is encrypted, the combination of the private and public keys creates a number which can be determined only by someone also having valid public and private keys (or an immense amount of time). Check out this video which attempts to explain this type of encryption: http://www.wimp.com/howencryption/ http://www.wimp.com/howencryption/.
- moxie 14y ago
  The secure voice app is ZRTP (they are just using an existing open source ZRTP library). The ZRTP protocol is now an RFC: http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6189 http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6189 The secure chat protocol they're using is something they developed and haven't yet published. It sounds as if it's similar to OTR, though. TextSecure (an encrypted SMS app I work on) uses a version of OTR adapted to the mobile environment, which is documented here: https://github.com/WhisperSystems/TextSecure/wiki/Protocol https://github.com/WhisperSystems/TextSecure/wiki/Protocol
zentrus 14y ago
My main question is how are these keys generated and exchanged? Normal diffie-hellman is susceptible to man-in-the-middle attacks. You can eliminate this by adding public key certificates to the mix, but how would Silent Circle manage these certificates? How easy would it be to forge an encrypted text from an account? Essentially, how does the app verify that the key it is given is legit? So many questions and so little detail.
- rcoh 14y ago
  PAKE solves the MITM issue of Diffie Hellman, so if they went the DH route, they probably used something along those lines.
- zentrus 14y ago
  Actually, I found that they use ZRTP from their website. Phil Zimmerman wrote it and he is one of the SC founders. Wikipedia gives a nice overview: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZRTP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZRTP
- moxie 14y ago
  For the voice app, it uses ZRTP. Basically, the initiator and responder perform an ephemeral DH key agreement. Both clients then independently generate a "short authentication string" (basically just two English words) from the shared secret they negotiated, and display those two words to the caller. Both callers then read the two words to each-other, and if they're the same, they know there couldn't have been a MITM attack. In the case where there's a MITM attack, each caller would have different key material, resulting in a different SAS. The protocol uses hash commitment and other tricks to make this really work in practice. They haven't published the protocol for their chat app's encryption yet, but it sounds similar to OTR. While OTR has some nice tricks for verifying authenticity by using zero-knowledge proofs, it doesn't sound as if they have support for that sort of thing, and parties would have to make a call and read a SAS to each-other over the phone.
  - jmspring 14y ago
    So voice is an iteration on Phil's Zfone product he was pushing a few years back...
dfc 14y ago
Is Silent Phone just zfone 2.0?
OldSchool 14y ago
I've always had this sneaking suspicion that Microsoft bought Skype solely under the direction of the government so that it could be centrally administered and monitored by a vendor that is willing to do the job. There certainly has never been a business case for it that would support the obscene valuation even the first time around. I usually see about 20m users logged in and most of them are probably not active let alone terminating calls to a telco so they represent zero revenue.
- mtgx 14y ago
  Might be why Microsoft was willing to pay twice as much as Google for it, too ($8 billion), for something that is hard to imagine they would get their money back in the next 2 decades or longer. So maybe they have a different business model we are not supposed to know about.
- s_henry_paulson 14y ago
  Along the same lines, I've always had the thought that the reason IPv6 adoption is taking so long is because encryption is actually built into the protocol. What happens to all those billion dollar wiretapping facilities all over the country once they find out they can't just siphon internet traffic into their facilities anymore?
  - fuzzix 14y ago
    "Along the same lines, I've always had the thought that the reason IPv6 adoption is taking so long is because encryption is actually built into the protocol" Are you talking about IPSec? This is still optional in IPv6 and available using IPv4. I think the reason adoption is slow is that it's not easy to convince managers to allocate people and time to it... "So, it's not yet broken but you want to fix it?"
projectmeshnet 14y ago
Open source alternative: Cjdns. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cjdns http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cjdns
- Cogito 14y ago
  This has been announced as open source as well, though it hasn't been released yet.
ihsw 14y ago
So this is like Tor but for mobile phones? Very interesting.
- moxie 14y ago
  Tor is like Tor for mobile phones (checkout Orbot). =) These applications have more emphasis on confidentiality than on anonymity. The type of "onion routing" that Tor employs for anonymity is very difficult/impossible to pull off for applications which require extremely low latency connections, such as a realtime voice application.
- jahmed 14y ago
  Not really. This still has a central server.
- drivebyacct2 14y ago
  Moxie's point is important, but one that is more important is the difference between anonymization and encryption. If your connection is not encrypted, it may be possible to determine who you are, but something being encrypted doesn't by nature mean that the users are unknown. In this case, they know each other and communicate encrypted. In Tor's onion routing, the server and user don't "know" each other and they communicate via an encrypted channel. Thus, if someone listens to your tor connection, they still can't see your data [and/or guess at your identity].
  - moxie 14y ago
    I don't think it's worth emphasizing the confidentiality aspects of Tor's "link layer" protocol, given that users really shouldn't conceptualize Tor as something which provides confidentiality for their traffic. Or as the Tor project says, plaintext over Tor is still plaintext: https://blog.torproject.org/blog/plaintext-over-tor-still-plaintext https://blog.torproject.org/blog/plaintext-over-tor-still-pl...
tsotha 14y ago
I'm pretty sure this kind of thing doesn't make governments nervous. For one thing, they can always place a virus or a bug on your phone. Or they can do it the old fashioned way and bug your car/office/bedroom. This will only going defeat the "dragnet" type stuff that combs through millions of conversations looking for keywords. I guess that's something, but if you've managed to attract the all-seeing eye you shouldn't be lulled into a false sense of security because the link between your mobile and someone else's is secure.
- fab13n 14y ago
  > if you've managed to attract the all-seeing eye [...] But I guess that governments expect large-scale surveillance to be the primary way to attract the all-seeing eye. National security was done a certain way during the cold war, when facing highly organized intelligence services. The swarms of nutjobs, loosely herd by amorphous terrorist organizations, are much harder to detect; many people probably have high hopes about big data and statistical methods to find them.
- dthunt 14y ago
  There are big concerns with mobile phones, especially with the radio baseband. I'm reluctant to consider phones genuinely 'secure' until the radio doesn't have access to the user OS or non-radio related hardware, and the microphone and sensitive storage is physically separated from the phone.
- mogrim 14y ago
  They can also just legislate you out of existence: "You want to operate here? You comply with the law. And that means a backdoor." As long as this service is commercial (which apparently it is) it will have a payment gateway, and that point can be easily blocked by a local government.
  - Vivtek 14y ago
    So everybody but the United States will have secure communications. Race to the bottom, then? The place seems more Soviet every day.
JonnieCache 14y ago
I love the fact that he's an ex-SEAL. Dragging him into a little room at the airport to intimidate him might not work so well here.
Mizza 14y ago
Can't believe people are getting so jazzed over proprietary encryption technology! It's a truly horrible idea, especially as there are already existing F/OSS alternatives, such as https://chatsecure.org/ https://chatsecure.org/ for iPhone.
- shin_lao 14y ago
  You overestimate the importance of source code availability for security. Counter-example: http://digitaloffense.net/tools/debian-openssl/ http://digitaloffense.net/tools/debian-openssl/ What matters is who writes the software, how experienced they are and what the validation process is.
  - iwwr 14y ago
    Without public availability of the source code and an auditable trail from source to build, there is really no way to trust it. Also, this: it reserves the right to shut off that person’s service and will do so "in seven seconds."
    - shin_lao 14y ago
      Without public availability of the source code and an auditable trail from source to build, there is really no way to trust it. This is where I feel you might be a little bit dogmatic. You don't need the source code to audit software. Software that are heavily used are audited. Microsoft software is probably more scrutinized that any other open source one (I'm not implying it's more secure, just that it's more analyzed). Security is a question of trust, not a question of source code. Even if you do the audit yourself, it's a question of trust: it means you trust your own abilities to evaluate the security. I'll go a little bit further. Did you check that the computer you bought isn't rigged? Maybe someone can remotely control your webcam or eavesdrop your keyboard. Did you check that the operating system you have hasn't been compromised? Maybe someone intercepted your download and patched it on the fly to insert a backdoor. Is your home physically secure? Maybe someone is copying your hard disk every day. You're right when you say Silent Circle should be scrutinized and criticized. Nevertheless, I disagree when you imply that the unavailability of its source code is a show stopper. Source code only makes one small part of the security audit a little bit easier. Security is a process, not a feature.
digitalengineer 14y ago
If these guys want it to go more mainstream they should let people purchase PRE-PAID cards. I love the idea of easy encryption but hate the SaaS. (That's fine for webservices but this is more of a phone-service. 20 bucks a/month is too much for most people).
- chiph 14y ago
  They're selling prepaid "Ronin" cards. Or you can fund your account with a prepaid Visa card (hint: Pay in cash at a supermarket you don't normally frequent) The SaaS part of it is pretty necessary. In order for your phone/pad to traverse a NAT firewall there needs to be a common device that acts as a matchmaker between callers. This also solves the problem of "What if the person I'm calling is at some random coffee shop, and not at home?", where they can't set up a firewall rule. But really, their initial audience is business people who won't blink an eye at $20+ a month to secure their communications for a multi-million dollar deal. Not cheapskates like me. :)
  - digitalengineer 14y ago
    Thanks Chip.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
perlpimp 14y ago
nice job, but it is not available in Russia. Maybe other itunes regions. What good does it do when it is not available?
aw3c2 14y ago
$20 is more than what I pay for my whole phone & data plan per month, that is much too expensive for me and my peers.
- gokhan 14y ago
  Every politician in any second or third world country would pay ten times as much for such a service, not counting people doing illegal things or things not approved by the ruling party / dictator etc. Having it as nice to have in a free country is one thing, having your life or career depend on eavesdropping free communication is another.
  - aw3c2 14y ago
    I would much rather have John Doe be safe from government surveillance than the government itself.
leke 14y ago
Janke's book: http://www.amazon.com/Power-Living-Mastering-The-Self-Discipline/dp/0967513936 http://www.amazon.com/Power-Living-Mastering-The-Self-Discip...
xyzzy123 14y ago
The problem with crypto is not source code. The problem with crypto is not the protocols or the algorithms. Partly it is infrastructure. Mostly it is network effect. Where the cypherpunks have failed (multiple times) is getting strong crypto to be the "default option" for a large enough proportion of users that it spreads virally and takes over the world. This is one more shot at it.
- pnathan 14y ago
  It's very hard to convince ordinary people that encryption benefits them. Encryption needs to be unbelievably easy to use in order to make the average joe-on-the-street use it. I've been involved with such efforts- the cold truth is "no one cares" (except people who REALLY care). So what usually happens is very few people set it up, and the ones who do will struggle through to make it work, because they care.

127 points by kunle 14y ago

If people are interested in this type of thing for Android, I recommend checking out the RedPhone and TextSecure apps. They're free to use, all the source code is GPLv3 on GitHub, and RedPhone already has global calling coverage. The apps have been translated into 15 languages, and in my experience they're really dead simple to use.

aw3c2 14y ago
I really hope that TextSecure will be ported to iOS.
- ConstantineXVI 14y ago
  Stop hoping and port it, then. The protocol[0] is based on OTR, which already has at least one Cocoa implementation in Adium. AFAIK you can't directly tap into SMS on iOS, so you'll either need to do a lot of copy/pasting or run across your own messaging network. [0] https://github.com/WhisperSystems/TextSecure/wiki/Protocol https://github.com/WhisperSystems/TextSecure/wiki/Protocol

rohern 14y ago

It seems to me the way to get around this (for the nervous government) is to attack the iphone itself and capture keystrokes, nay?

ntaylor 14y ago
> If authorities wanted to intercept the communications of a person using Silent Circle, it is likely they’d have to resort to deploying Trojan-style tools—infecting targeted devices with spyware to covertly record communications before they become encrypted.

mayneack 14y ago

Really wish I could sign up and then hold my free month until after the Android app comes out. Guess I'll just keep checking back (or assume that when it happens, it will be mentioned here)

moxie 14y ago
You might check out RedPhone and TextSecure (I'm one of the developers). They're in the Play Store and on GitHub.
ahelwer 14y ago
How do you get a free month? This looks like it'd be fun to play around with. Edit: Somehow didn't see the giant "subscribe now and receive a free 30-day subscription" on the homepage.

chrisballinger 14y ago

It's good to hear they will be releasing the source! A tool like this would be rather insane to use by anyone serious about security without the ability to inspect the source. The article states it will be under a "noncommercial open-source license".

Cogito 14y ago
I'm interested if they will release enough to reproduce the entire system, or only the client aspect. It's apparently using client-client protocols, but there is obviously some level of discoverability provided by the network that is a monetisation avenue for the company.

dzuc 14y ago

Janke assembled what he calls an “all-star team”: Phil Zimmerman, a recent inductee to the Internet’s Hall of Fame, who in 1991 invented PGP encryption, still considered the standard for email security. Jon Callas, the man behind Apple’s whole-disk encryption (which is used to secure hard drives in Macs across the world), became Silent Circle’s chief technology officer. Yeah... that might actually qualify as "all-star"

notimetorelax 14y ago
I'm not familiar with the specifics, why do you think they are not real all-star?
- samstave 14y ago
  I think he is being serious, not facetious...
  - notimetorelax 14y ago
    Quotes confused me a little.
    - gagege 14y ago
      And the ellipsis.
rdl 14y ago
There are actually a few more developers at Silent Circle who are just as good as those two, so it really is an amazingly strong team.

bluedanieru 14y ago

> It will store only the email address, 10-digit Silent Circle phone number, username, and password of each customer. Surely this is not correct.

ntaylor 14y ago
I'm sure that it will be encrypted.
joshAg 14y ago
I hope this is just a miscommunication about what is actually stored (salted hash instead of plaintext).
JshWright 14y ago
I'm the guy who wrote the accounts management platform for Silent Circle. Rest assured, passwords are stored as PBKDF2 hashes. (I realize bcrypt is popular around here, but when it comes to crypto stuff, standards are a good thing, most of the time...) edit: s/DK/KD/
- na85 14y ago
  How much computing power would it take to brute-force one of those hashes? We know NSA has gargantuan parallel processing capabilities.
  - bluedanieru 14y ago
    I think it's far more likely they'd find a way to break the hash function and not tell anyone about it.
  - JshWright 14y ago
    We tune the hash iterations to take a reasonably long amount of time on our modern hardware. That said, a dedicated and well funded attack on a single hash could certainly crack it in a relatively short period of time (which is why we protect the hashes as if they were cleartext passwords...)

zwass 14y ago

The problem is, anyone who is serious about security is going to need to read the source and compile the binary they load onto their phone. Nontechnical people aren't going to be able to do that.

hollerith 14y ago
A tech guy can ask a non-tech guy if he can examine his phone. If the binary on the phone differs from any binary the tech guy can get by compiling clean source code, he can raise questions. This is how a group of tech guys who are in communication with each other can protect the privacy of a much larger population of non-tech guys.
- xyzzy123 14y ago
  Right; if you don't understand the technology (or like most of us, haven't taken the time to comprehensively review it) you have to rely on social proof.
drivebyacct2 14y ago
Well with those two sentences you've pretty much ensured that this is never, ever possible. You'd have to have a trust system from the silicon up, signed bootloader, hypervisor, no exploits, etc to guarantee that the system you're booting is executing the binaries you think it is. At some point "good enough" has to be enough. Okay, you built the APK, how do you know I don't control the VM and just swap out that JIT'd method with one that I've altered? (Repeat this until you get all the way back to the initial power-up)
- acuozzo 14y ago
  Ah, good old "Reflections on Trusting Trust".
xyzzy123 14y ago
Thinking about this really hard, I'm not sure how nontechnical people can ever be sure that they can trust technical artifacts?

SparrowOS 14y ago

God says... 28:23 Ye shall offer these beside the burnt offering in the morning, which is for a continual burnt offering. 28:24 After this manner ye shall offer daily, throughout the seven days, the meat of the sacrifice made by fire, of a sweet savour unto the LORD: it shall be offered beside the continual burnt offering, and his drink offering. 28:25 And on the seventh day ye shall have an holy convocation; ye shall do no servile work. 28:26 Also in the day of the firstfruits, when ye bring a new meat offering unto the LORD, after your weeks be out, ye shall have an holy convocation; ye shall do no servile work: 28:27 But ye shall offer the burnt offering for a sweet savour unto the LORD; two young bullocks, one ram, seven lambs of the first year; 28:28 And their meat offering of flour mingled with oil, three tenth deals unto one bullock, two tenth deals unto one ram, 28:29 A several tenth deal unto one lamb, throughout the seven lambs; 28:30 And one kid of the goats, to make an atonement for you. ---- It's obvious animal sacrifices are silly, but it's the thought that counts. IT'S THE THOUGHT THAT COUNTS!!! You fucken morons, do something! http://www.sparrowos.com/Wb/Apps/AfterEgypt/Comics/ http://www.sparrowos.com/Wb/Apps/AfterEgypt/Comics/ http://www.sparrowos.com/Wb/Accts/TS/Wb2/Hymns.html http://www.sparrowos.com/Wb/Accts/TS/Wb2/Hymns.html God says... taste repay wrinkle plan Righteousness forgetfulness Courage appointments forgivest commandment Sometimes mortality congregations commander pleased sumptuously Who periods commendeth let's infants force seat perils indulgent stories hay torture blesses wert praise esteeming umm exclude prey Themselves Love glances malice prisoner recited begin habit A act reproved sick lattice founded illusion walking dispel conceived wonderful depressing obscure fiercest Brazil students do_not_disturb chastely stones bond need estimate enlisted fairly transgression preferable mutually fore-perceiving glass fly pains son's beyond exult PUBLIC shops MEDIUM faultfinders blew fuller for define *This alluring

Fando 14y ago

Wow I would love to learn the details of this technology.

ntaylor 14y ago
It sounds like a fairly standard shared key encryption. Basically, each user has a unique private key and all users share a common public key. When the data is encrypted, the combination of the private and public keys creates a number which can be determined only by someone also having valid public and private keys (or an immense amount of time). Check out this video which attempts to explain this type of encryption: http://www.wimp.com/howencryption/ http://www.wimp.com/howencryption/.
moxie 14y ago
The secure voice app is ZRTP (they are just using an existing open source ZRTP library). The ZRTP protocol is now an RFC: http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6189 http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6189 The secure chat protocol they're using is something they developed and haven't yet published. It sounds as if it's similar to OTR, though. TextSecure (an encrypted SMS app I work on) uses a version of OTR adapted to the mobile environment, which is documented here: https://github.com/WhisperSystems/TextSecure/wiki/Protocol https://github.com/WhisperSystems/TextSecure/wiki/Protocol

zentrus 14y ago

My main question is how are these keys generated and exchanged? Normal diffie-hellman is susceptible to man-in-the-middle attacks. You can eliminate this by adding public key certificates to the mix, but how would Silent Circle manage these certificates? How easy would it be to forge an encrypted text from an account? Essentially, how does the app verify that the key it is given is legit? So many questions and so little detail.

rcoh 14y ago
PAKE solves the MITM issue of Diffie Hellman, so if they went the DH route, they probably used something along those lines.
zentrus 14y ago
Actually, I found that they use ZRTP from their website. Phil Zimmerman wrote it and he is one of the SC founders. Wikipedia gives a nice overview: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZRTP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZRTP
moxie 14y ago
For the voice app, it uses ZRTP. Basically, the initiator and responder perform an ephemeral DH key agreement. Both clients then independently generate a "short authentication string" (basically just two English words) from the shared secret they negotiated, and display those two words to the caller. Both callers then read the two words to each-other, and if they're the same, they know there couldn't have been a MITM attack. In the case where there's a MITM attack, each caller would have different key material, resulting in a different SAS. The protocol uses hash commitment and other tricks to make this really work in practice. They haven't published the protocol for their chat app's encryption yet, but it sounds similar to OTR. While OTR has some nice tricks for verifying authenticity by using zero-knowledge proofs, it doesn't sound as if they have support for that sort of thing, and parties would have to make a call and read a SAS to each-other over the phone.
- jmspring 14y ago
  So voice is an iteration on Phil's Zfone product he was pushing a few years back...

dfc 14y ago

Is Silent Phone just zfone 2.0?

OldSchool 14y ago

I've always had this sneaking suspicion that Microsoft bought Skype solely under the direction of the government so that it could be centrally administered and monitored by a vendor that is willing to do the job. There certainly has never been a business case for it that would support the obscene valuation even the first time around. I usually see about 20m users logged in and most of them are probably not active let alone terminating calls to a telco so they represent zero revenue.

mtgx 14y ago
Might be why Microsoft was willing to pay twice as much as Google for it, too ($8 billion), for something that is hard to imagine they would get their money back in the next 2 decades or longer. So maybe they have a different business model we are not supposed to know about.
s_henry_paulson 14y ago
Along the same lines, I've always had the thought that the reason IPv6 adoption is taking so long is because encryption is actually built into the protocol. What happens to all those billion dollar wiretapping facilities all over the country once they find out they can't just siphon internet traffic into their facilities anymore?
- fuzzix 14y ago
  "Along the same lines, I've always had the thought that the reason IPv6 adoption is taking so long is because encryption is actually built into the protocol" Are you talking about IPSec? This is still optional in IPv6 and available using IPv4. I think the reason adoption is slow is that it's not easy to convince managers to allocate people and time to it... "So, it's not yet broken but you want to fix it?"

projectmeshnet 14y ago

Open source alternative: Cjdns. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cjdns http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cjdns

Cogito 14y ago
This has been announced as open source as well, though it hasn't been released yet.

ihsw 14y ago

So this is like Tor but for mobile phones? Very interesting.

moxie 14y ago
Tor is like Tor for mobile phones (checkout Orbot). =) These applications have more emphasis on confidentiality than on anonymity. The type of "onion routing" that Tor employs for anonymity is very difficult/impossible to pull off for applications which require extremely low latency connections, such as a realtime voice application.
jahmed 14y ago
Not really. This still has a central server.
drivebyacct2 14y ago
Moxie's point is important, but one that is more important is the difference between anonymization and encryption. If your connection is not encrypted, it may be possible to determine who you are, but something being encrypted doesn't by nature mean that the users are unknown. In this case, they know each other and communicate encrypted. In Tor's onion routing, the server and user don't "know" each other and they communicate via an encrypted channel. Thus, if someone listens to your tor connection, they still can't see your data [and/or guess at your identity].
- moxie 14y ago
  I don't think it's worth emphasizing the confidentiality aspects of Tor's "link layer" protocol, given that users really shouldn't conceptualize Tor as something which provides confidentiality for their traffic. Or as the Tor project says, plaintext over Tor is still plaintext: https://blog.torproject.org/blog/plaintext-over-tor-still-plaintext https://blog.torproject.org/blog/plaintext-over-tor-still-pl...

tsotha 14y ago

I'm pretty sure this kind of thing doesn't make governments nervous. For one thing, they can always place a virus or a bug on your phone. Or they can do it the old fashioned way and bug your car/office/bedroom. This will only going defeat the "dragnet" type stuff that combs through millions of conversations looking for keywords. I guess that's something, but if you've managed to attract the all-seeing eye you shouldn't be lulled into a false sense of security because the link between your mobile and someone else's is secure.

fab13n 14y ago
> if you've managed to attract the all-seeing eye [...] But I guess that governments expect large-scale surveillance to be the primary way to attract the all-seeing eye. National security was done a certain way during the cold war, when facing highly organized intelligence services. The swarms of nutjobs, loosely herd by amorphous terrorist organizations, are much harder to detect; many people probably have high hopes about big data and statistical methods to find them.
dthunt 14y ago
There are big concerns with mobile phones, especially with the radio baseband. I'm reluctant to consider phones genuinely 'secure' until the radio doesn't have access to the user OS or non-radio related hardware, and the microphone and sensitive storage is physically separated from the phone.
mogrim 14y ago
They can also just legislate you out of existence: "You want to operate here? You comply with the law. And that means a backdoor." As long as this service is commercial (which apparently it is) it will have a payment gateway, and that point can be easily blocked by a local government.
- Vivtek 14y ago
  So everybody but the United States will have secure communications. Race to the bottom, then? The place seems more Soviet every day.

JonnieCache 14y ago

I love the fact that he's an ex-SEAL. Dragging him into a little room at the airport to intimidate him might not work so well here.

Mizza 14y ago

Can't believe people are getting so jazzed over proprietary encryption technology! It's a truly horrible idea, especially as there are already existing F/OSS alternatives, such as https://chatsecure.org/ https://chatsecure.org/ for iPhone.

shin_lao 14y ago
You overestimate the importance of source code availability for security. Counter-example: http://digitaloffense.net/tools/debian-openssl/ http://digitaloffense.net/tools/debian-openssl/ What matters is who writes the software, how experienced they are and what the validation process is.
- iwwr 14y ago
  Without public availability of the source code and an auditable trail from source to build, there is really no way to trust it. Also, this: it reserves the right to shut off that person’s service and will do so "in seven seconds."
  - shin_lao 14y ago
    Without public availability of the source code and an auditable trail from source to build, there is really no way to trust it. This is where I feel you might be a little bit dogmatic. You don't need the source code to audit software. Software that are heavily used are audited. Microsoft software is probably more scrutinized that any other open source one (I'm not implying it's more secure, just that it's more analyzed). Security is a question of trust, not a question of source code. Even if you do the audit yourself, it's a question of trust: it means you trust your own abilities to evaluate the security. I'll go a little bit further. Did you check that the computer you bought isn't rigged? Maybe someone can remotely control your webcam or eavesdrop your keyboard. Did you check that the operating system you have hasn't been compromised? Maybe someone intercepted your download and patched it on the fly to insert a backdoor. Is your home physically secure? Maybe someone is copying your hard disk every day. You're right when you say Silent Circle should be scrutinized and criticized. Nevertheless, I disagree when you imply that the unavailability of its source code is a show stopper. Source code only makes one small part of the security audit a little bit easier. Security is a process, not a feature.

digitalengineer 14y ago

If these guys want it to go more mainstream they should let people purchase PRE-PAID cards. I love the idea of easy encryption but hate the SaaS. (That's fine for webservices but this is more of a phone-service. 20 bucks a/month is too much for most people).

chiph 14y ago
They're selling prepaid "Ronin" cards. Or you can fund your account with a prepaid Visa card (hint: Pay in cash at a supermarket you don't normally frequent) The SaaS part of it is pretty necessary. In order for your phone/pad to traverse a NAT firewall there needs to be a common device that acts as a matchmaker between callers. This also solves the problem of "What if the person I'm calling is at some random coffee shop, and not at home?", where they can't set up a firewall rule. But really, their initial audience is business people who won't blink an eye at $20+ a month to secure their communications for a multi-million dollar deal. Not cheapskates like me. :)
- digitalengineer 14y ago
  Thanks Chip.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

perlpimp 14y ago

nice job, but it is not available in Russia. Maybe other itunes regions. What good does it do when it is not available?

aw3c2 14y ago

$20 is more than what I pay for my whole phone & data plan per month, that is much too expensive for me and my peers.

gokhan 14y ago
Every politician in any second or third world country would pay ten times as much for such a service, not counting people doing illegal things or things not approved by the ruling party / dictator etc. Having it as nice to have in a free country is one thing, having your life or career depend on eavesdropping free communication is another.
- aw3c2 14y ago
  I would much rather have John Doe be safe from government surveillance than the government itself.

leke 14y ago

Janke's book: http://www.amazon.com/Power-Living-Mastering-The-Self-Discipline/dp/0967513936 http://www.amazon.com/Power-Living-Mastering-The-Self-Discip...

xyzzy123 14y ago

The problem with crypto is not source code. The problem with crypto is not the protocols or the algorithms. Partly it is infrastructure. Mostly it is network effect. Where the cypherpunks have failed (multiple times) is getting strong crypto to be the "default option" for a large enough proportion of users that it spreads virally and takes over the world. This is one more shot at it.

pnathan 14y ago
It's very hard to convince ordinary people that encryption benefits them. Encryption needs to be unbelievably easy to use in order to make the average joe-on-the-street use it. I've been involved with such efforts- the cold truth is "no one cares" (except people who REALLY care). So what usually happens is very few people set it up, and the ones who do will struggle through to make it work, because they care.