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AWS acquires Wickr

aws.amazon.com

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Re: AWS acquires Wickr

#71

Post by LordDragonfang »

arpinum wrote: post #66
colmmacc wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work on cryptography at AWS, and long before that I worked on Skype a bit, so I can't resist commenting! Wickr features end to end cryptography, https://wickr.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/WhitePaper_Wick... , and I can't see why we'd change that (and even that framing is a bit weird, I'm sure Wickr will continue to be autonomous but maybe with access to more resources from the rest of Amazon). Increasingly, end-t…

AWS hired the architect behind the NSA's attempt at breaking commercial crypto, according the Matthew Green [0]. I can't trust AWS will be truthful about their crypto systems and lack of backdoors. [0] - https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/13571435600055091...

To be fair, if you were interested in hardening your system and evaluating attack surfaces, that is also what you would do.

Re: AWS acquires Wickr

#72

Post by noir_lord »

borski wrote: post #7

Wickr is great tech, and I’m glad to see them get a positive outcome - but boy, I really am curious what AWS wants to do with this.

Amazon is pushing hard into government services.

Wickr has a large contract already with the US military so I guess this closes a gap they needed closed.

Re: AWS acquires Wickr

#73

Post by thayne »

> an innovative company that has developed the industry’s most secure, end-to-end encrypted, communication technology

that's a pretty bold claim.

Re: AWS acquires Wickr

#74

Post by arpinum »

LordDragonfang wrote: post #71
arpinum wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AWS hired the architect behind the NSA's attempt at breaking commercial crypto, according the Matthew Green [0]. I can't trust AWS will be truthful about their crypto systems and lack of backdoors. [0] - https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/13571435600055091...

To be fair, if you were interested in hardening your system and evaluating attack surfaces, that is also what you would do.

Great! invite someone into the building who has lied to the entire crypto community to undermine global security. They will surely know how to spot bad actors!

Invite a bad actor into the building in order to keep bad actors out.

Invite bad actor into the building?

Hmm, maybe not.

Re: AWS acquires Wickr

#75

Post by dijit »

thayne wrote: post #73

> an innovative company that has developed the industry’s most secure, end-to-end encrypted, communication technology that's a pretty bold claim.

The lawyer brain in me is asking me to define “the industry”.

If “the industry” is one that currently uses POTS then it is the most secure, yes- because they sell enterprise software to various industries.

The thing is: they use different protocols on their consumer apps than their enterprise ones; only the enterprise ones have an open (or, released) protocol specification.

Re: AWS acquires Wickr

#76

Post by kovek »

knaik94 wrote: post #24

I wonder if this will be used in a more positive way than what most people would assume initially. There are tons of legal situations where confidentiality is absolutely necessary, for example when dealing with medical or legal records. I imagine Amazon's GovCloud might incorporate this as a potential cloud hosted chatting solution. With telemedicine and remote legal proceedings becoming more and more common, secure…

Some data we treat we care. Other data we do not. I wonder if that creates a different culture and risk than if we treated all data with care. What do you think?

Re: AWS acquires Wickr

#79

Post by wkrthrow »

AndrewUnmuted wrote: post #67
counternotions wrote: post #4

Certainly one unexpected way for the government to scare off and shut down nefarious communications happening on Wickr. Note this platform has been popular amongst the darkest underbelly of the web (e.g. carders, drug dealers).

Though true, this is just about entirely irrelevant given where Wickr has gone since 2016. It may surprise you to learn that Wickr was awarded a large US Airforce contract last year. [0] [0] https://wickr.com/wickr-awarded-us-air-force-contract/

Why is it irrelevant post-2016? Wickr was still a preferred choice of drug dealers well up to 2018 (and probably beyond). I know this because I was using it to communicate with them.

Re: AWS acquires Wickr

#80

Post by SkyPuncher »

knaik94 wrote: post #24

I wonder if this will be used in a more positive way than what most people would assume initially. There are tons of legal situations where confidentiality is absolutely necessary, for example when dealing with medical or legal records. I imagine Amazon's GovCloud might incorporate this as a potential cloud hosted chatting solution. With telemedicine and remote legal proceedings becoming more and more common, secure…

Having implemented HIPAA compliant software, the technical requirements arent very difficult. If you're following developments beat practices, you have 99% of technical requirements covered. The challenge with HIPAA is building process and documentation that demonstrates compliance.

It's particularly challenging at the edges of your engineering org where people tend to use tools that abstract the technical details.

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