5 ms·

>I'd also like to have them publish and guarantee exactly what they mean by "encrypted to the PSTN" If you look at the infographic from the article you'll see

by tetrep 12y ago

>I'd also like to have them publish and guarantee exactly what they mean by "encrypted to the PSTN" If you look at the infographic from the article you'll see that if it's not end-to-end then it's only to their servers. The crypto will flow from Caller<->Callee or Caller<->Server. I think it's safe to assume that their server then connects to the PSTN, hence "encrypted to the PSTN."

JshWright 12y ago
Precisely. The PSTN leg is routed via iBasis. http://www.broadwayworld.com/bwwgeeks/article/Silent-Circle-Announces-Strategic-European-Carrier-Partnership-With-KPN-20140219-page2#.U78gA1a7Fbw http://www.broadwayworld.com/bwwgeeks/article/Silent-Circle-... Disclaimer that I feel like I repeat too often but is probably still warranted: I am a Silent Circle employee.
- bellerocky 12y ago
  I wonder if it would be better opsec for security oriented companies to have policies that encourage employees not to reveal their employer. You have 3000+ karma with a significant posting history, which I think translates into an increased surface area for social engineering attacks. The more someone knows about you the more they could either find a way through you into the company, and eventually on to the servers. Like for instance you might reveal something in your posts that could be used to find out more about you online and eventually get access to your amazon account, or paypal account, or your gmail account and use this to get access to your work email or enough information to impersonate you or impersonate someone who pretends to know you, until eventually they get in and find access to things Silent Circle doesn't want people to access. Relevant: http://xkcd.com/538/ http://xkcd.com/538/
  - JshWright 12y ago
    As with many things in life, it's a tradeoff... Does it help someone who is conducting recon on Silent Circle employees? Absolutely. But by the same token, we feel the fact that we do have employees who are active parts of communities like this is an asset. For that matter, communities like HN are a great asset to companies like us (we've had great success with the Who's Hiring threads). It wouldn't take much for someone to sort out my HN profile regardless of my disclaimer though. My HN username is the same as my GitHub username, which is linked to the Silent Circle organization.
    - bellerocky 12y ago
      If you have private repos on GitHub, and lets say GitHub has a security vulnerability[1] that lets users post to private repos it probably would be better if malicious people who knew that their target used Silent Circle didn't know you were on GitHub. Which I didn't, until you just mentioned it. Why are you on GitHub? [1] http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/03/hacker-commandeers-github-to-prove-vuln-in-ruby/ http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/03/hacker-commandeers-g...
      - JshWright 12y ago
        We don't host any private repos at GitHub. I'm on GitHub because we release the sources of our clients and because we use several open source libraries in our stack and it's very impractical to push changes upstream if you don't have a GitHub account. I could certainly do that anonymously, but again... tradeoffs. It's more convenient for me to do it from my primary account (which makes me more likely to do it) and there are advantages to publicly sharing that we give back to projects that we use. Do you think someone doing a recon on a target like a developer at Silent Circle _wouldn't_ check for a GitHub profile? EDIT: Dunno who is downvoting you. You raise very valid points (ones that we have had many conversations about), and have been very cordial...
  - sbierwagen 12y ago
    1.) Security theater. The hypothetical competent attacker already knows who works for Silent Circle, from any one of a dozen different public sources. No company that actually accepts money from customers can be stealth enough. 2.) Mere access to a security company's internal network isn't as useful as it would be for, example, a credit card processor's internal network. (Except for stealing secret keys, etc) The more serious threat is not intrusion, but tampering. (Pretending to be a employee for sneaky NSA-style RNG-weakening, etc) Covert tampering is a heck of a lot harder.
- MichaelGG 12y ago
  So you IPSec to iBasis and then what? Or do you have servers colo'd remotely with iBasis and the client has those keys in the app? Because Skype uses iBasis too, so I'm failing to see a difference. Also, how is iBasis the PSTN? They do quite a bit of IP handoff (and IIRC there were a big fan of the laughably insecure NexTone platform). Are they providing you a product where they encrypt their traffic on their own network and ensure local TDM handoff in every country? (And even then, it's surprising how much stuff ends back up on IP.) The claim of "encrypted-to-the-PSTN" sounds either slightly far-fetched or defined in a useless way. (I'm all for Silent Circle, but this PR comes off very wrong.)
  - JshWright 12y ago
    The client does a ZRTP handshake with a media relay which sets up the PSTN call. We are adding POPs depending on traffic in order to get that ZRTP termination as close as we can to common destinations, ideally minimizing as many border crossings as possible (as that is, at least theoretically, where the greatest risk of interception exists). The goal of PSTN calling isn't to provide bulletproof security. The goal is to provide a somewhat reduced exposure, and to allow you to use the app as your default dialer, hopefully making it a habit. If you need your conversation to be very secure, then both parties should be using the app (and hopefully you're both in the habit of using it anyway, since you can make your PSTN calls there as well).
- simonebrunozzi 12y ago
  I've been trying to get in touch with your CEO - could you be of help? @simon on Twitter, you find my email there. Thanks :)
  - JshWright 12y ago
    I'm <my first name>@silentcircle.com, where my first name is 'josh'. Feel free to shoot me an email and I can pass you along to Mike.

by tetrep 12y ago

JshWright 12y ago

Precisely. The PSTN leg is routed via iBasis. http://www.broadwayworld.com/bwwgeeks/article/Silent-Circle-Announces-Strategic-European-Carrier-Partnership-With-KPN-20140219-page2#.U78gA1a7Fbw http://www.broadwayworld.com/bwwgeeks/article/Silent-Circle-... Disclaimer that I feel like I repeat too often but is probably still warranted: I am a Silent Circle employee.

bellerocky 12y ago
I wonder if it would be better opsec for security oriented companies to have policies that encourage employees not to reveal their employer. You have 3000+ karma with a significant posting history, which I think translates into an increased surface area for social engineering attacks. The more someone knows about you the more they could either find a way through you into the company, and eventually on to the servers. Like for instance you might reveal something in your posts that could be used to find out more about you online and eventually get access to your amazon account, or paypal account, or your gmail account and use this to get access to your work email or enough information to impersonate you or impersonate someone who pretends to know you, until eventually they get in and find access to things Silent Circle doesn't want people to access. Relevant: http://xkcd.com/538/ http://xkcd.com/538/
- JshWright 12y ago
  As with many things in life, it's a tradeoff... Does it help someone who is conducting recon on Silent Circle employees? Absolutely. But by the same token, we feel the fact that we do have employees who are active parts of communities like this is an asset. For that matter, communities like HN are a great asset to companies like us (we've had great success with the Who's Hiring threads). It wouldn't take much for someone to sort out my HN profile regardless of my disclaimer though. My HN username is the same as my GitHub username, which is linked to the Silent Circle organization.
  - bellerocky 12y ago
    If you have private repos on GitHub, and lets say GitHub has a security vulnerability[1] that lets users post to private repos it probably would be better if malicious people who knew that their target used Silent Circle didn't know you were on GitHub. Which I didn't, until you just mentioned it. Why are you on GitHub? [1] http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/03/hacker-commandeers-github-to-prove-vuln-in-ruby/ http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/03/hacker-commandeers-g...
    - JshWright 12y ago
      We don't host any private repos at GitHub. I'm on GitHub because we release the sources of our clients and because we use several open source libraries in our stack and it's very impractical to push changes upstream if you don't have a GitHub account. I could certainly do that anonymously, but again... tradeoffs. It's more convenient for me to do it from my primary account (which makes me more likely to do it) and there are advantages to publicly sharing that we give back to projects that we use. Do you think someone doing a recon on a target like a developer at Silent Circle _wouldn't_ check for a GitHub profile? EDIT: Dunno who is downvoting you. You raise very valid points (ones that we have had many conversations about), and have been very cordial...
- sbierwagen 12y ago
  1.) Security theater. The hypothetical competent attacker already knows who works for Silent Circle, from any one of a dozen different public sources. No company that actually accepts money from customers can be stealth enough. 2.) Mere access to a security company's internal network isn't as useful as it would be for, example, a credit card processor's internal network. (Except for stealing secret keys, etc) The more serious threat is not intrusion, but tampering. (Pretending to be a employee for sneaky NSA-style RNG-weakening, etc) Covert tampering is a heck of a lot harder.
MichaelGG 12y ago
So you IPSec to iBasis and then what? Or do you have servers colo'd remotely with iBasis and the client has those keys in the app? Because Skype uses iBasis too, so I'm failing to see a difference. Also, how is iBasis the PSTN? They do quite a bit of IP handoff (and IIRC there were a big fan of the laughably insecure NexTone platform). Are they providing you a product where they encrypt their traffic on their own network and ensure local TDM handoff in every country? (And even then, it's surprising how much stuff ends back up on IP.) The claim of "encrypted-to-the-PSTN" sounds either slightly far-fetched or defined in a useless way. (I'm all for Silent Circle, but this PR comes off very wrong.)
- JshWright 12y ago
  The client does a ZRTP handshake with a media relay which sets up the PSTN call. We are adding POPs depending on traffic in order to get that ZRTP termination as close as we can to common destinations, ideally minimizing as many border crossings as possible (as that is, at least theoretically, where the greatest risk of interception exists). The goal of PSTN calling isn't to provide bulletproof security. The goal is to provide a somewhat reduced exposure, and to allow you to use the app as your default dialer, hopefully making it a habit. If you need your conversation to be very secure, then both parties should be using the app (and hopefully you're both in the habit of using it anyway, since you can make your PSTN calls there as well).
simonebrunozzi 12y ago
I've been trying to get in touch with your CEO - could you be of help? @simon on Twitter, you find my email there. Thanks :)
- JshWright 12y ago
  I'm <my first name>@silentcircle.com, where my first name is 'josh'. Feel free to shoot me an email and I can pass you along to Mike.