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Free, Worldwide, Encrypted Phone Calls for iPhone

whispersystems.org

171–180 of 211 posts

Re: Free, Worldwide, Encrypted Phone Calls for iPhone

#171

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..."

Not NSA directly but apparently US. Government did fund Open Whisper Systems:

"US. Government Funded Your Favorite ‘NSA-Proof’ Apps"

http://revolution-news.com/us-government-funds-favorite-nsa-...

"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."

Re: Free, Worldwide, Encrypted Phone Calls for iPhone

#172

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,…

You missed the main holy grail requirement: open source. Nothing closed source can be trusted.

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?

Re: Free, Worldwide, Encrypted Phone Calls for iPhone

#173
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I forgot about the part where it's mandatory for search engines to comply with a robots.txt

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. It is non-obviously difficult.

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.

Re: Free, Worldwide, Encrypted Phone Calls for iPhone

#174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You missed the main holy grail requirement: open source. Nothing closed source can be trusted.

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?

I could compile the source for iPhone (well someone could I have no idea. Probably some SDK). Then compare hashes.

Re: Free, Worldwide, Encrypted Phone Calls for iPhone

#175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You missed the main holy grail requirement: open source. Nothing closed source can be trusted.

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?

compile yourself.

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.

Re: Free, Worldwide, Encrypted Phone Calls for iPhone

#176

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,…

To my knowledge, Jitsi fulfills your Holy Grail of Secure Communications requirements. It certainly much more trustworthy than Skype.

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.

Re: Free, Worldwide, Encrypted Phone Calls for iPhone

#177
post #158

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,…

Why is it so hard to find cross-platform, encrypted group chat? Surely there's a market for it.

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).

Re: Free, Worldwide, Encrypted Phone Calls for iPhone

#178
post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To my knowledge, Jitsi fulfills your Holy Grail of Secure Communications requirements. It certainly much more trustworthy than Skype.

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.

You can get away with any old XMPP account, provided that your contacts are either on the same network or your network and theirs are federated.

This used to be the case with GTalk, but sadly isn't anymore.

Re: Free, Worldwide, Encrypted Phone Calls for iPhone

#179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I could compile the source for iPhone (well someone could I have no idea. Probably some SDK). Then compare hashes.

Actually you cannot. Rebuilding from the same source almost never yield identical binaries.
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