Many people are already familiar with Moxie Marlinspike's WhisperSystems because of their Android apps: RedPhone for encrypted calls, and TextSecure for SMS messages.
The release of Signal is a pretty big deal for iOS users; previously, we had to consider a paid option like Silent Circle, or a larger corporate option like FaceTime Audio (which isn't really the same).
Although I haven't actually used the app yet (it's registering now), the screenshots appear to be a fairly direct port of RedPhone to iOS.
Edit: Yep! And it looks like Signal users can make secure calls to contacts with RedPhone installed, too. Very nice.
Is there any way you can substantiate any of this? I wouldn't be shocked, but it seems borderline implausible that we'd be getting all this interest in various ways to hack into iPhones physically if you could just dial a number--and I think it also goes without saying that, whether Apple provides official backdoors or no, it has a high interest in ensuring that there aren't any unofficial backdoors for many other reasons (preserving DRM for one example, if you need them to have a selfish motivation).
I'm fascinated by this idea of a deep web only accessible by the cognoscenti. Presumably if a link slips out then the deep web becomes a lot shallower?
Well actually the relatively hard part is hosting a crawler of decent size, and then if you crawl in violation of robots.txt its pretty straight forward to use iptables to ban you, of course you then spend money on hiring a botnet to mask your traffic footprint, except that on that same darknet there might be people who are friends of the owner of that botnet.
Does this not rather beg the question - is there a deep web, and how big (or small) is it. I can easily understand the desire for a coherent group of people putting up vpns etc to keep their world seperate from others - but that implies you join in based on some other criteria, which sounds not very deep web but pretty secret-VPN-we-are-not-telling-you-about-unless-we-cross-your-AS-Number-when-something-is-obvious
It just has that feel of "secret society" to it, which tended just to reflect the informal power structures of the wider world anyway.
No, the "deep web" is real in the sense that there are billions of network addresses that contain content or services which are not accessible through the 'standard' discovery services (Google). In many ways things like Usenet are still part of it as there are netnews groups, and they get used, but there isn't a lot of indexing going on. Further there are at least two 'separated' NNTP type networks that are invitation only.
So it is a "collection" of secret societies, each with their own quirks. As a collection is constitutes a 'web' and perhaps the only commonality is the desire to not be part of the "public" web.
Can confirm this. I interviewed for a UK based competitor who was scared NSO were better. The competitor's supposed capabilities were scary enough for me to bin my phone contract at the time because they had my contact details. The agent was less than honest about the job description as well. Arseholes all around.
Stipulate that somebody has an exploit for libjpeg, and that's probably enough to own a phone by texting them. That said, with a libjpeg exploit, there's a lot more fun one can have.
It's possible to do this in a staged way -- basically, give me 100k phone numbers, I'll do automated attacks and catch 25-50k of them (old unpatched OSes for which if I had a $5-10mm budget I'd have 0-days ready, phishing, etc.).
Then, use the early victims to catch the rest -- hopefully they're admin assistants, HR people, etc. Targeted attacks on the rest.
Black bag jobs on the remainder, using legal or extralegal means, based on value of the target. It's not worth bothering to black bag someone who you only want to get the big boss if the big boss is otherwise exploitable.
The key is you don't need to have a single exploit which works on 100% of your targets; you can do multiple things.
"We're going to need verifiable sources for claims like that."
This entire parent+thread argument back and forth is completely absurd.
It doesn't matter whether he has sources. It doesn't matter whether that firm does or does not exist. It doesn't matter what you think of their tech or his explanation or who is who or what is what.
Your phone has two[1] completely independent, full-featured computers inside of it, totally distinct from the actual computer that is your phone (that you use) that are completely out of your control, and depending on the model, have up to DMA control over your device.
Whisper systems does not solve this. SecurePhoneBlahBlah does not solve this. Moxie Marlinspike does not solve this. If you have a smartphone, you are owned at a deeper level than you've ever been owned before and there is nothing you can do about it other than removing your SIM card. Game over.
[1] The baseband processor and the SIM chip itself.
Great point -- that is 101 of any serious security equipment validation. It is not that this software package/app or that card and so on are certified. The whole package from ground up (hardware components down to analog bits, EM emission... up to top level application get certified as secure) has to be.
I can't buy some mathematically proven secure software, install it on a Chinese tablet and claim it is secure and expect it to get approved.
This is a funny market as some domestic analog components are hard to find today. Micron, I think, makes some but heck most are sourced from China.
This makes 'secure' hardware ridiculously expensive. As in $50k+ for switches and routers and there is a whole market specializing in it.
Now, one can look at it another way -- some security is better than no security. I can see the argument on both sides. At least if NSA can record my phone calls maybe the local cops can't and so on...
Use separate devices: one with SIM/baseband, one without (wifi only).
Only encrypted traffic goes through the mobile device, e.g. cheap Firefox phone. Decryption takes place on wifi-only "media player" device in the form factor of a phone.
This is still exposed to DMA attacks from wifi device, but it's a smaller attack surface. Next level of protection is a hardware IOMMU on Cortex-A15 or x86 VT-d, plus a Type-1 hypervisor to isolate the wifi device.
Keep in mind that even without a SIM, the GSM radio is still active[1]. From my GSM-layman perspective, it sounds safer than being in a "trusted" pairing with the network, yet since it's all closed source, you have to wonder if there are magic packets that can own your device just as badly as if you have a SIM in.
>> Whisper systems does not solve this. SecurePhoneBlahBlah does not solve this.
1. The SIM chip generally is not a full featured computer and I'm unsure that it would have DMA access. But yes the baseband processor is indeed an issue.
2. Products like this prevent the kind of passive data-slurping that has been popular so far - i.e. install a box at the telco and record everything. That's a good start.
So yes, it does matter and it's a good start, and it pushes up costs for pervasive surveillance.
The SIM card is a full featured computer. It has memory, a CPU, and your telco operator can upload java applets to it which can interact with the baseband and the application processors.
And that's the point ... right now the stingrays and such simply act as IMSI catchers, etc., but if they can impersonate the carrier they can upload arbitrary java applets to the SIM card which can undermine the call-encryption app you are using. It's an obvious next step which you aren't protected against.[1]
I don't know if any SIM cards get DMA access the way some baseband processors (not all) do ...
[1] You could get one of those little sim wrapper foils and enable encryption-only for your SIM (which it almost certainly does not have now) which I think would defeat a lot of the carrier-impersonation attacks ...
This is an important point. We waste a lot of breath accusing people of having deliberately planted backdoors, and moving to alternatives that we think are too trustworthy to have backdoors in them.
Whether or not the programmers behave ethically, they're still going to make mistakes and write vulnerable code like everyone else, and you'd better believe the security services (and their contractors) are looking for them.
To be fair, the stuff you are talking about is targeted malware. The odds of people being actively targeted rather than passively surveilled is orders of magnitude in difference.
Everyone is being passively watched at some level, even if it is just for billing purposes.
Signal makes it much harder to tap your phone and makes mass surveillance extremely difficult, both of which are still important. But you're right that people need to be informed of the risks they still face.
It seems realistic to me. Just send a phishing SMS ("Your bill of $103.54 is due TODAY: http://payments-comcast.net/83954583"), hope the user clicks it, have the webpage exploit one of the numerous iOS Safari vulnerabilities, and you are done. There are tons of vulnerabilities in smartphone browsers: iOS 7.1.2 alone fixed 28 UNIQUE VULNERABILITIES in Webkit (http://support.apple.com/kb/HT6297) 7.1.2 was released merely 2 months after 7.1.1, so at least 3 vulnerabilities are discovered and fixed every week.
Please authenticate with something that's not a phone number! I guess that's the simplest for most people (look at WhatsApp), but the reason why I use things like Signal is because I despise cell carriers. I'd like to use this on a (cheaper) non-cellular device (for myself and family members).
The Holy Grail of Secure Communications: Group Encrypted Text, Voice, and Video. Right now, Skype gives you the unholy grail, but you get all three (+group). I wish Open Whisper Systems luck.
nice. it requires a 3rd party FB, Google, AIM, ICQ, ippi, iptel or MSN account but it says they optionally use OTR.
Not 100% secure IMHO but close. Why do they have to rely on a 3rd party for authentication? This still gives (at least, if you manually enable OTR encryption) the connection data to the service providers.
I agree with that but to bring encryption close to end-users you will have to use something that's simple and everybody has.
Said that, I'm aware of the disadvantages - they should provide an alternative to the phone number too.
The market exists, but it's in its infancy. The Snowden revelations blew a hole wide open in the privacy market, and that's why you're starting to see more and more privacy companies opening. I suspect it won't be long before one of them (whisper?) offers a cross platform, encrypted group chat like you speak of. But these things take a while to build.
if mobile/tablet-only is OK, try wickr (wickr.com).
It works fairly well for me. They have a $100.000 bounty for someone who manages to break their code/get communication contents and they're sponsored by the EFF.
The downsides are that it's closed-source and that there's no desktop client (yet).
How do you know that the app published on the App Store is the same one you have the source code for? Can't I can just give you some source code then release something else entirely?
or download from a source you trust and compare hash from another trustworthy source. just like anything you download. unless you run gentoo, but then how do you trust your sources, etc
and if you have a closed source phone os that only allows to install from their store... well you have to learn to crawl before you walk.
B) hash checksums for everything, including the resulting binaries
You probably can't do this on iOS, but on Android you can have a third party app monitoring the changes, or simply disabling the automatic updates altogether.
Complete transparency from end to end would require more than just open source. You'd have to be able to build and run the software itself, which on an iPhone costs $99 a year to do and poses significant technical challenges. To go further you'd have to transparency at the hardware level as well. Your own device, built by you, with software you compiled yourself. Maybe then you'd achieve the level of security that you're aiming for, assuming you are competent enough to evaluate the software and hardware you are using.
It wouldn't be for iPhone. For Android it might work but you'd need a hardware platform you trust (one where you are sure no radio baseband processor is going to snoop at your memory any time it wants), use AOSP and then an open source app. Then also if there are any registration or routing services those would have to be open source as well.
I was going to donate today, but it seems like the donations are being wasted. I work hard for my money and if my donations go towards a trivial (and arguably unnecessary) 2 line CSS change that would really piss me off.
Can we donate only to certain apps? I want to see TextSecure for iOS out as soon as possible, I couldn't care less about CSS changes on your website or escaping some readme file.
I am also one of the core devs. Actually, none of the Bithub donations go close to being a working wage for any programmer actively working on the repository. We either get paid by grants or are volunteer. Asking us to micromanage Bithub grants for one or two off contributors would only be more work. We went with a "worse is better" strategy with the goal of encouraging people to regularly commit in however they feel comfortable. It's an experiment that we've been pleased with and if you would rather donate to a dev individually just look at who the top contributors are and reach out. We appreciate any support from PRs to Bitcoin to press.
Fair enough, thank you very much for working on such an awesome and important project.
After looking at that specific developers commit history it seems like he does commit a ton all over the place, these were just the last few and immediately drew my attention.
Yes, she is one of our 2 core Web client developers, along with one of the 2 core website maintainers, and does a lot of the docs! I would merge a request with a smiley for Bitcoin for all the work she does.
It seems reasonable to me. Good documentation is a critical part of a project's success. It's hard and valuable work.
And think of it in terms of replacement cost. What would it take for all of these changes to be made by core developers instaed? Every moment we have the core developers working on the crypto while a supportive community takes part in documentation -- at a rate far, far lower per hour rate than I imagine the core developers would value their time if they were contractors -- is a net win, in my figuring.
How do I set up a similar system with BitHub rewards for commits? I would like to put $100 towards it and see whether it would be worthwhile to continue.
How do I translate the app to Simplified Chinese? I visited the link, but Chinese wasn't in the list of languages I could choose to translate. I added a 'request' for it to the list. Will I be notified when the request is approved and I can start translating strings?
I can help with the Greek translation along with StavrosK. Created my account at Transifex today, but have to get some sleep now. Will get in contact tomorrow, if you can create a GR version/repo.
It's great that we have more privacy options for phone calls, texts, etc. But we still need a great "Privacy" phone, right?
There's been attempts to do so recently (Blackphone, PrivacyPhone), but both have suffered from the same fault: a binary blob for the baseband, something that renders all your privacy moot. I've heard the best recommendation is a tablet + USB LTE dongle, to put some space between the two processors ("firewalling" the baseband processor a bit).
Is there a better way than this? Has anyone kinda walked through all the steps neccesary to have a private/"secure" phone?
That being said, congratulations to Whisper Systems -- their work on things like TextSecure and Redphone have been awesome. I hope one day they do a Kickstarter for a whole secure mobile operating system.
"I've heard the best recommendation is a tablet + USB LTE dongle, to put some space between the two processors "
This is an interesting, and tempting, direction to go in ... my understanding is that this is problematic, however.
You see, in addition to all of the (radio stuff) that the baseband processor handles, it turns out that they also handle a lot of voice quality functions, such as noise cancel, echo cancel, interference, etc. - all things that we take for granted on all phones.
I have been told that VOIP apps running on non-mobile-phone "handsets" (like you're suggesting) are somewhat difficult to use for plain old voice, because they lack all of these functions which are difficult to replicate (and are wrapped up in a lot of patents and trade secrets, etc.)
The open source PJSIP (which I do have first hand experience of) has echo cancel and some noise cancellation. It's not cutting edge but it works fine in practice. You might not get quite the quality of Skype but better than plain old landline telephone service.
2) An example of the kinds of things one has to deal with: many 8 numbers will drop calls that don't provide a supervised signal to the public switched telephone network.
Many phone apps simply neglect to implement call supervision, which causes weird failures when interfacing with some pbx systems.
A dongle has a binary blob, but it's limited to the dongle itself -- it won't most likely be able to transverse the USB pipeline and get access to system memory / processes unless there are vulnerabilities in the USB transfer itself. I can also remove the dongle from the devise and know that baseband is off -- not so if the processor is on the phone itself.
It doesn't render all your privacy moot. It's limited to snooping on what you send over the radio, which is the same as what your cell carrier would have access to even with a secure baseband. (Edit: unless the baseband hacks into the software running on the other side of the radio and exfiltrates data right from your SD card... hm...)
What I would like to see is a way to verify that you're connected to a legitimate cell tower and not an eavesdropper.
In many/most phones, the radio can access the ram of the device(DMA). the reason is efficient transfer of data, but with that comes the possibility of the radio reading everything inside the ram, including encrytion keys.
Not necessarily - some processors (Snapdragon, for example) implement the baseband right into the core processor -- it will have more access than just the radios. I'm pretty sure the baseband also has access to the memory as well, right?
you are mixing things up. Privacy and Opensource. For a true open source project look at http://www.replicant.us/
And regarding privacy: Use SIM cards which do not require an ID and which you can throw away ;) but this is only the first step.
Privacy and Open Source can be the same thing -- the idea being that if we know how something was built, we can make sure there aren't any backdoors / "hidden" features that we don't know about. Most if not all of the open source operating systems still include a binary baseband blob, although work is progressing on a few (the best one I saw only worked on really, really old phones).
One of the main criticisms of the Blackphone was that A) PrivacyOS (I think it was called) was seemingly black box (no pun intended) -- they said they would open up the code soon, but we haven't seen anything yet B) It still would use a binary baseband. The illusion of security is sometimes worse than no security, and open source code helps with removing those barriers (Although it doesn't neccesarily -- just look at OpenSSL).
Why is the App Store application search process so horrible? I agree, "Signal" and "Whisper" are bad things to have to search for, but there's basically no way to enter a simple memorable text string in the store and get the right app.
I ended up using a browser on the phone to go to the HN article to go to the right app store link.
It's really horrible on the iOS store, less so on Google play.
I am like ranked 100+ on a certain low volume, extremely specific keyword that has approximately 20 actual apps related to that keyword in the store. This keyword is in my apps name. The other 80 are just random games and apps that happen to be more popular and Apple has somehow correlated to my keyword.
It's a free app and I don't advertise. It sucks that people looking for my solution specifically will never even find it. I'm amazed it ever gets downloaded to be honest...
On Google play, they at least take the name of the app vs. search term into account pretty heavily. So if I name an app "Widget Doodad" I will be ranked amongst all of the other apps related to Widget, before non widget related apps show up.
Perhaps the idea is to encourage browsing? Like how stores like Target and Walmart move things around all the time with the goal of forcing you to explore the store.
Regardless I agree trying to find apps through any of the built in app stores is a nightmare, ios, android, and windows alike.
It seems worth giving iOS apps "distinctive" names just to win the type-in traffic, if it doesn't work better; or at least having a weird company name with a boring product name so people can at least search on product.
Maybe kids these days do EVERYTHING on mobile, including web browsing to find new apps; my problem is I browse on one platform without iTunes, but want the app on my iPhone.
>Perhaps the idea is to encourage browsing? Like how stores like Target and Walmart move things around all the time with the goal of forcing you to explore the store.
It's a different situation though. In a physical store, you won't leave the store on a whim. In the app store, you can easily exit if distracted by a text, twitter, etc.
Got to it on the company website, but on a desktop browser (can't find it using my phone browser). So I emailed the URL to myself to click on it in my phone mail client :-)
I wanted to donate $5 to BitHub using Bitcoin, but Coinbase's overlay doesn't allow you to change the amount (typing a new amount in does nothing). Does anyone know of a way around this?
Moxie, if you see this, can you publish some static address we can send funds to as well?
It would be nice if the server software were open source as well.
Call routing information, like all metadata, can only be protected legally not cryptographically. So it's not something I trust to people outside Canada, no matter how much esteem I have for them.
"Call routing information, like all metadata, can only be protected legally not cryptographically."
A counter example of this is seen through ImperialViolet's pond(https://pond.imperialviolet.org/). Using pond, neither metadata nor content are leaked, as both are transmitted over tor every set interval.
> Call routing information, like all metadata, can only be protected legally not cryptographically.
In this system. You could, for example, route calls over Tor (with crippling latency). There is no theoretical reason you can't make a fully anonymous audio comms system.
Have one million devices constantly streaming a random stream of data to each other; when a device wants to communicate with another it just swaps the random stream for the encrypted stream.
Hence a trivial example of low-latency anonymity achieved through using bandwidth.
At this moment. You are devoid of imagination if you can't conceive of this happening at some point in the future. The concept does not contradict physics.
Rebranding, plus they want to combine RedPhone and TextSecure into a single app: Signal. Since they're just now starting on iOS, no point naming it RedPhone now, just to rename it to Signal 3 months from now.
You do realize charitable giving represents hundreds of billions of revenue for non-profits every year ? - and that's excluding religious donations which are likely to represent an even larger amount.
You can downvote all you want, but you are missing the point.
Is Whisper Systems a charity, non-profit or a commercial entity? If it's either of first two, then it would've only make sense to say just that in the About section, because it would alleviate all questions of why their products are free. However if it's a commercial entity, the question remains - how do they plan on making money? And donations is a silly answer. They are a nice bonus, but as any goodwill gestures they are an unsustainable and unpredictable source of money unless there are dedicated people managing it, e.g. organizing fundraisers, campaigns and such. I don't think WS is doing any of this.
Whisper Systems no longer exists. Open Whisper Systems is a project, not a company. It's not a commercial entity. There is no profit model, no business plan, nothing. It is free, open source, donationware (in both money for devs and dev time). The people directing it are well known and have repeatedly shown themselves to be very switched on. All code is open to audit.
There isn't a business model. Not everything has to have a business model.
The only business model I would even remotely associate with this is, on an individual developer level, the reputation and future work opportunities you would get from having your name associated with this stuff.
Many states are denying FOIA requests regarding this spying but there are several news stories from this year of data obtained from these fake "towers" being used in court. They can be put in vans or just be near people or be used at any large gathering of people.
I used an Android phone with RedPhone and this Signal app with iOS and it works perfectly. Very well done! Need encrypted text messaging ASAP!
They are also saying TextSecure and RedPhone will be merged into Signal. That'll be great!
I will gladly donate to this company if they will increase the speed of development.
Question: If my phone has a limited amount of minutes and I have RedPhone or Signal and I call someones phone who doesn't have one of these programs, does that use my minutes or does it only use Data (or WiFi)?
I'm not sure, I doubt it, but that doesn't mean there aren't other ways to intercept them.
iOS still sends normal text messages to any device that isn't iOS. I use an Android device for the most part and almost everyone I know uses iOS, which means that even if I'm using TextSecure the message will be delivered as a normal text message, which certainly can be intercepted and stored by Stingray and similar devices.
No, the messages are encrypted device-to-device with Apple providing a key directory service. Apple must be complicit to read messages without physical or backdoor access to the device.
This has nothing to do with the Stingray devices though.
Apple can certainly decrypt any iMessage, as explained very thoroughly in the article you linked to.
If Apple can decrypt them, then law enforcement can decrypt them, so they don't really even need the Stingray device.
Nobody knows whether or not the NSA stores all iMessages. They certainly can, and from everything we've seen if they can, they do, so if you are concerned about privacy you have to assume that they do. The thing about the NSA databases these days is that they allow multiple governments and other government agencies to access that data.
Imagine how many peoples lives would be "ruined" if someone took that data and published it on the internet, "here is every iMessage for the past year".
Maybe a stupid question, but is the app sending this encrypted voice over the cellular channel, or is it making a data connection independent of the phone?
Also, on a different point, if I were trying to eavesdrop on someone's conversation, I would probably just try to hack the microphone with a different / already loaded app...
Will we eventually get video calling, too? (especially in the browser version, perhaps by using a more secure version of WebRTC?)
Also, I suggest dropping SMS support, and going "data-only" for the new Signal. Or at the very least disable all SMS/MMS stuff by default, and only leave them as opt-in options in settings. Don't even prompt users about it, because most will say yes, without really knowing what they're doing, and that the app will start eating SMS credits without realizing.
But really, you should just drop it. I mean look how successful Whatsapp is, and doesn't have any SMS support, let alone an end-to-end encrypted one.
These guys are doing amazing high-quality work. I'm really amazed that they can pull it off with volunteers and donations. There are very few examples of polished front-end apps in the open source world.
As soon as I registered, I started getting "No Caller ID" phone calls every few minutes from some unknown person speaking Chinese (which I don't speak). This is pretty annoying, to say the least.
There doesn't seem to be any way to deregister your phone number? So what now?
"Signal uses your existing number, doesn’t require a password, and leverages privacy-preserving contact discovery to immediately display which of your contacts are reachable with Signal."
How does contact discovery work? What happens when run on a device without a (valid) SIM?
How can you trust a product promising privacy when it runs on a closed-source platform (that is further also known to collect data on the user and to be prone to government surveillance)?
Real privacy is only possible on platforms that are 100% open-source.
Didn't Apple debunk that debunking themselves in February, when they released the iOS Security doc? [1]
According to Apple, each device's private key is generated locally and never leaves the device, making it impossible to MITM your messages.
From page 20: "For each key pair, the private keys are saved in the device’s keychain and the public keys are sent to Apple’s directory service (IDS), where they are associated with the user’s phone number or email address, along with the device’s APNs address."
That doesn't make it impossible to MITM - Apple still controls the keyserver.
When I ask for nardi's public key, they can give me theirs, I encrypt it with that key and send it. They use their private key to decrypt it, store it, and then encrypt it with your actual public key and forward it along, neither of us any the wiser.
If you don't have a SAS phrase or some other way to aurally verify the other party, you can never be secure against a MITM. Signal does this, while I doubt it's available in FaceTime audio.
> I'm sure there is no real end-to-end encryption.
"The audio/video contents of FaceTime calls are protected by end-to-end encryption, so no one but the sender and receiver can access them. Apple cannot decrypt the data."
You don't know what you don't know - or in other words, have you seen the latest research on iOS surveillance mechanisms? There could be other "undocumented" stuff that makes the encryption of Facetime Audio irrelevant.
In the very same doc you quote, they also say of iMessage:
"Apple does not log messages or attachments, and their contents are protected by end-to-end encryption so no one but the sender and receiver can access them. Apple cannot decrypt the data."
"The audio/video contents of FaceTime calls are protected by end-to-end encryption, so no one but the sender and receiver can access them. Apple cannot decrypt the data." [1]
Ahhhh I'm so excited for this, but it's not in the Australian store and I can't change it to US as I have an iTunes Match sub :( Any ETA on when it'll be here?
Signal is a much more neutral brand than RedPhone. RedPhone sounds either like an adult network or spying app.
At one of the Shuttleworth Foundation gatherings (where all Shuttleworth fellows meet bi-annually) I remember having a conversation about the branding of RedPhone and everyone unanimously agreed that it would hinder wider spread adoption of the software.
I'm not sure what all the factors in re-branding were but I remember Moxie agreeing with the sentiment at the time.
Yes. Signal for Android will be coming, apparently, and will integrate RedPhone and TextSecure capabilities. According to the original article, "Signal will be a unified private voice and text communication platform for iPhone, Android, and the browser. Later this summer, Signal for iPhone will be expanded to support text communication compatible with TextSecure for Android. Shortly after, both TextSecure and RedPhone for Android will be combined into a unified Signal app on Android as well. Simultaneously, browser extension development is already under way."
Signal will be a unified private voice and text communication platform for iPhone, Android, and the browser. Later this summer, Signal for iPhone will be expanded to support text communication compatible with TextSecure for Android. Shortly after, both TextSecure and RedPhone for Android will be combined into a unified Signal app on Android as well. Simultaneously, browser extension development is already under way.
I also am not receiving the SMS validation code. I'll update when I get (or don't get) the promised phone call (which comes ~4m after they think they sent the SMS). I suspect they're just overloaded by the HN spike.
Edit: The app called, offered me a code which was rejected, and refuses to Re-call me because "rate limit exceeded."
Noone's ever going to build a secure device if people are fed such snake oil and given the impression that they have "some" or "enough" security if they use it.
The point is, they get 0 security and we should not pretend that they are getting more. We are ripping off consumers if we do, what we think they want is a poor excuse, unless we're just in it for the money/fame/other benefits.
Software like this is about making mass surveillance more expensive. If you have a backdoor or a remote exploit for a phone, you might still be able to wiretap somebody, but at least all data on the network is encrypted.
Apparently I'm fighting windmills here, but encryption does not work on compromised devices. It will be sabotaged and rendered ineffective. Google for DROPOUTJEEP, what makes you think you can keep the encryption code safe from manipulation?
When the client device is compromised (and we know that iOS is [1]), it doesn't matter how secure the link is. If I were a sophisticated attacker and wanted to listen to your conversation, I could just tap your mic and audio output.
At -3, it amazes me why people on here would down vote facts. It's not like you're disagreeing with me - you're disagreeing with reality. Sometimes, the stupidity of people on here is mind-boggling.
Next round of Edward Snowden leaks: "NSA created and funded 'open whisper systems' as a way to get people to think their calls were encrypted when in reality calls went straight to the NSA..."
Their encryption/transfer method has been public for a while and the app is opensource. From what I've read (I'm not technically savvy enough and don't have enough time to actually study it) it shouldn't be possible for them to read your message even if they wanted to. Please someone correct me if I'm wrong.
"Radio Free Asia funds many software projects through its Open Technology Fund." (...) "The Open Technology Fund listed Open Whisper Systems as accepting $455,000 in 2013."
"the Open Technology Fund (OTF) was created in early 2012 from U.S. Government (USG) funds and sustained by annual grants from the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) as a program of Radio Free Asia (RFA)"
The release of Signal is a pretty big deal for iOS users; previously, we had to consider a paid option like Silent Circle, or a larger corporate option like FaceTime Audio (which isn't really the same).
Although I haven't actually used the app yet (it's registering now), the screenshots appear to be a fairly direct port of RedPhone to iOS.
Edit: Yep! And it looks like Signal users can make secure calls to contacts with RedPhone installed, too. Very nice.