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I think that more focus, at least in the short term; needs to be put on making crypto accessible to windows users. As an example, consider the following project

I think that more focus, at least in the short term; needs to be put on making crypto accessible to windows users. As an example, consider the following project website: https://www.gpg4win.org/ https://www.gpg4win.org/ An invalid security certificate, and even that only if you go out of your way to specify https. If the vast majority of users saw this, they'd go running; including myself. I can't in good conscious recommend crypto that doesn't have it's own security certificates under control. I have as yet not seen any less shady open implementations of PGP out there. Of course, because of the proprietary nature of windows, it is totally possible for them to have back doors which will break your encryption, but I'm fairly sure that there are ways to verify, even without source code; that Microsoft isn't pulling any funny business.[0] [0]: Besides, I'd prefer a situation where politically unsavory backdoors have to be used to read your data, as opposed to it being plain text and free for all.

rdl 14y ago
I feel pretty safe predicting that most communications are moving to mobile, vs. desktops. Even if you have a desktop, most of your communications will happen on a mobile device. The thing we really need (and what I'd fund if I had a spare $Xmm or so) is a great crypto API and solution to the user key management problem for iOS and Android, hooked into apps. It's technically easier to do on Android. On iOS, you're kind of stuck due to the core apps (mail, messages, etc.) being first-party Apple). It basically would take Apple deciding they cared about this issue, then building it into the OS in a way which didn't actually require trusting Apple completely, to work very well. Android has some steps toward this with some NSA projects, and wouldn't even necessarily require a full forking. Some way to do tokenization and thus fairly transparent encryption on the client (phone) inside apps like the Facebook App, Twitter, etc. would also be nice. That's both a technical challenge and a UI/UX problem. Silent Circle (from Jon Callas, Phil Zimmerman, Vinnie Moscaritolo (the PGP team...) and some Navy SEALs and defense contractors I knew from Iraq) actually seems like a pretty viable choice for sms, email, and voice right now. It unfortunately doesn't integrate into the social networks and other services people use, though.
- unimpressive 14y ago
  I feel pretty safe predicting that Desktop computing will be around for a while yet. I also feel pretty safe in saying it's not an either or thing, we can have both; and should.
- rattus 14y ago
  Silent Circle appears to be for people who both 1) Want military-grade(ish) hardened coms and also 2) Aren't willing to set it up themselves, but trust a service provider to do it for them I read their docs a bit ago and don't really get it. I didn't really get Whisper Systems offering either as it appeared to have a broken trust model on a variety of levels. If I cared about this kind of thing, and I really don't, I'd likely want to own all parts of the transport system and have the only available threat surface be the encryption algorithm as much as possible http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/Asterisk+encryption http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/Asterisk+encryption Might it all be pointless without massive amounts of traffic padding based on this attack? I wouldn't know. http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10207-010-0111-4?LI=true http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10207-010-0111-4...

rdl 14y ago

I feel pretty safe predicting that most communications are moving to mobile, vs. desktops. Even if you have a desktop, most of your communications will happen on a mobile device. The thing we really need (and what I'd fund if I had a spare $Xmm or so) is a great crypto API and solution to the user key management problem for iOS and Android, hooked into apps. It's technically easier to do on Android. On iOS, you're kind of stuck due to the core apps (mail, messages, etc.) being first-party Apple). It basically would take Apple deciding they cared about this issue, then building it into the OS in a way which didn't actually require trusting Apple completely, to work very well. Android has some steps toward this with some NSA projects, and wouldn't even necessarily require a full forking. Some way to do tokenization and thus fairly transparent encryption on the client (phone) inside apps like the Facebook App, Twitter, etc. would also be nice. That's both a technical challenge and a UI/UX problem. Silent Circle (from Jon Callas, Phil Zimmerman, Vinnie Moscaritolo (the PGP team...) and some Navy SEALs and defense contractors I knew from Iraq) actually seems like a pretty viable choice for sms, email, and voice right now. It unfortunately doesn't integrate into the social networks and other services people use, though.

unimpressive 14y ago
I feel pretty safe predicting that Desktop computing will be around for a while yet. I also feel pretty safe in saying it's not an either or thing, we can have both; and should.
rattus 14y ago
Silent Circle appears to be for people who both 1) Want military-grade(ish) hardened coms and also 2) Aren't willing to set it up themselves, but trust a service provider to do it for them I read their docs a bit ago and don't really get it. I didn't really get Whisper Systems offering either as it appeared to have a broken trust model on a variety of levels. If I cared about this kind of thing, and I really don't, I'd likely want to own all parts of the transport system and have the only available threat surface be the encryption algorithm as much as possible http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/Asterisk+encryption http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/Asterisk+encryption Might it all be pointless without massive amounts of traffic padding based on this attack? I wouldn't know. http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10207-010-0111-4?LI=true http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10207-010-0111-4...