Surespot app - free and open source encryption for everyone
1–10 of 30 posts
Re: Surespot app - free and open source encryption for everyone
#2Only everyone on Android. Sadly my friends use ios and windows, so we have to wait.
Re: Surespot app - free and open source encryption for everyone
#3Only everyone on Android. Sadly my friends use ios and windows, so we have to wait.
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Re: Surespot app - free and open source encryption for everyone
#4"Only the person you send the message to can read it. Period."
To use this kind of sentences on new software not reviewed by the comunity is dangerous. There is people that risk their lifes using this kind of app.
The thing that puzzles me is that sentence: "You can delete your message from the receivers phone." I don't see in the 'how it works' any information about it. Do they do that in a cryptographic way somehow that I can not imagine? Or is basically that the application removes the content if the server request it, something we could avoid just with a backup or modifying the code of the app.
Re: Surespot app - free and open source encryption for everyone
#5"When a user is created and its public keys uploaded to the server, the server signs the public keys. Clients that download the public key then validate the signature of the key against the hardcoded server public key in the client. This ensures a MITM attack trying to use a rogue key pair to impersonate a user will be prevented."
This doesn't look good to me. Process implies trusting central server for cryptographic operations, which is very insecure. Central server should only be used as transport mechanism and should not be in any way involved in cryptographic operations that include working with secret keys. If someone, for example, seizes control of server (for government agencies this is an easy task, especially in these days) then he could forge user's public keys. The fact that public key is hardcoded in client application doesn't solve the problem either. What if server key is compromised? You'll have users with hardcoded compromised key in their app. Not a good situation. I see bunch of other security related problems in algotrithm description page also, but this one is crucial.
Re: Surespot app - free and open source encryption for everyone
#6"Only the person you send the message to can read it. Period." To use this kind of sentences on new software not reviewed by the comunity is dangerous. There is people that risk their lifes using this kind of app. The thing that puzzles me is that sentence: "You can delete your message from the receivers phone." I don't see in the 'how it works' any information about it. Do they do that in a cryptographic way somehow…
You can never, ever be assured that a message has been deleted. There's always packet sniffing, a modified client, even just taking a screen dump. It requires trust in the participant.
Recently I read a whitepaper where a security tester was talking to a malware author on Skype. The author mentioned an IP address and deleted it moments afterwards. The researcher dumped their ram into a file and searched for the string (successfully).
Re: Surespot app - free and open source encryption for everyone
#7"Only the person you send the message to can read it. Period." To use this kind of sentences on new software not reviewed by the comunity is dangerous. There is people that risk their lifes using this kind of app. The thing that puzzles me is that sentence: "You can delete your message from the receivers phone." I don't see in the 'how it works' any information about it. Do they do that in a cryptographic way somehow…
Indeed. More like, the person that has recorded your encrypted message probably won't be able to read it until they're able to get a hold of the session key, perhaps by gaining physical access to yours or the receivers phone, or by installing malware on either phone, or because of a flaw in the (p)rng that was used to generate the key.
It is open source, so at least it is trivial to create a clone that interops flawlessly, while copying off plaintext to a third party (That's not a flaw with the project as such, but it is a risk with using "security" software in general -- how do you verify the security software? In some ways this is made worse by app stores -- because they delegate trust away from the user and into obscurity; the appstore assures you that the app you installed is the app someone uploaded -- not that it does what you think it does).
Re: Surespot app - free and open source encryption for everyone
#8BTW, this code would have trouble sending messages between locales. I had a quick look at the encryption code, and found this:
public static String sign(PrivateKey privateKey,
String data, String derivedPassword) {
return sign(privateKey, data.getBytes(), derivedPassword.getBytes());
}
https://github.com/surespot/android/blob/master/src/com/twof...
...but someone making a mistake with getBytes() usually does it everywhere.
Re: Surespot app - free and open source encryption for everyone
#9BTW, this code would have trouble sending messages between locales. I had a quick look at the encryption code, and found this: public static String sign(PrivateKey privateKey, String data, String derivedPassword) { return sign(privateKey, data.getBytes(), derivedPassword.getBytes()); } ... which of course uses the current platform's character set, not a consistent one across platforms. Definitely not what you want in…
Just thinking about that - this class of error gets reported by Findbugs and other static analysis tools. So, this bug indicates that there aren't tools like that in the build - for a security app, where correctness should be top priority, that's surprising.
Re: Surespot app - free and open source encryption for everyone
#10"Only the person you send the message to can read it. Period." To use this kind of sentences on new software not reviewed by the comunity is dangerous. There is people that risk their lifes using this kind of app. The thing that puzzles me is that sentence: "You can delete your message from the receivers phone." I don't see in the 'how it works' any information about it. Do they do that in a cryptographic way somehow…
sounds like the same problem as DRM. Once content is made available to the user, there's always a chance to intercept and copy it (unless we can install a DRM chip inside people's brain and even then I imagine there would be some hacks).