Ask HN: How do apps build encryption in calls? Any libraries or open source?

7 pointsquotz2 comments

I know it consists of separating the audio in small packets and then encrypting them before theyre being sent to another user. However, theres so many of these encrypted call apps that I am getting the feeling that its either easy to make one or theres open source stuff or libraries that can help?

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Encrypted voice is very tricky to get right. One of the state of the art open protocols is SRTP (and ZRTP). However, outside of Signal and a few others, a fair amount of e2e encrypted voice is proprietary and aimed at the defence market. Webrtc (including p2p) is also encrypted, but it’s not e2e unless the calls are p2p.

One channel for information leakage is variable bitrate codecs. Have a look at this paper. http://www.cs.jhu.edu/~cwright/voip-vbr.pdf

Is webrtc not p2p? I will check out SRTP! Thanks for letting me know!

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