Free, Worldwide, Encrypted Phone Calls for iPhone | Hacker News Reader

Free, Worldwide, Encrypted Phone Calls for iPhone

whispersystems.org

410 pointsdavid_shaw194 comments

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.

Definitely a huge win for Apple consumers. :)

Moxie also made a sailing documentary that is good called hold fast http://vimeo.com/15351476

OMG I knew the name sounded familiar. This doc is SO GOOD.

Funny that a HN member would know his name from that rather than his security work. I guess we're pretty diverse. :) I enjoyed that doc too.

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.

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

+1, and also uses zrtp

Needs to be quality on mobile too.

It's all standard communication protocols. You can use any mobile client you want.

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.

You missed the main holy grail requirement: open source.

Nothing closed source can be trusted.

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.

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.

Actually you could. They are called "deterministic builds".

But this would require some kind of effort from project maintainers.

I'm quite unknowledgeable about this, but from what little I understand: That is actually a very major effort in many cases, isn't it?

You cannot do that for iOS binaries, because they are signed by Apple before publishing on the Store (and so the hash will change).

You can avoid the signature when hashing.

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.

The way it's usually done is you publish your

A) exact compilation settings

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.

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

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.

These guys have been trying for as long as I think http://silcnet.org/

I would assume that the problems are more difficult compared to simple P2P.

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).

Threema also has group chat functionality

Wickr is not sponsored by the EFF

The announcement here says that Signal will support text messaging compatible with TextSecure later in the summer.

I've been using TextSecure on android for some time, group chat is part of it.

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.

Hey, I'm the co-lead developer of Signal. We're looking for help with translations, help us out to bring Signal to as many people as possible: https://www.transifex.com/projects/p/signal-ios/ We also pay per commit if you want to help on Open Whisper Systems projects: http://bithub.whispersystems.org/

These seem like incredibly generous payments for such small commits...

https://github.com/WhisperSystems/whispersystems.org/commit/...

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.

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.

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.

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.

This should be all you need: https://github.com/WhisperSystems/BitHub

I haven't tried it and have no affiliation with it, just saw that the repo is there.

If you approve russian translation request, I'll be happy to help

I'd also be happy to give Greek a stab.

I can help with Russian as well.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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?

> What I would like to see is a way to verify that you're connected to a legitimate cell tower and not an eavesdropper.

Is there a way for cell tower's to "sign" their announcements cryptographically with LTE?

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.

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).

"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.)

I have no first-hand experience, however.

A couple thoughts:

1) A LTE dongle still has a binary blob.

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.

See here for some more detail: http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/index.php?page_id=3209

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.

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.

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.

I can't believe this hasn't been solved.

Apple has kind of always sucked at search. It's a shame, considering the quality of the rest of their ecosystem.

Word. The other day I typed the correct name of an app into the Apple web search box, no hits. Try Google, first hit straight to the app store.

Last month I posted the John Dvorak piece where he suggests Apple should buy themselves some search - http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2458892,00.asp ; it features an amusing pic proposing DuckDuckGo http://www9.pcmag.com/media/images/429429-apple-isearch-mock...

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.

>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.

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.

It might not be in there yet. The app was released about an hour ago.

https://itunes.apple.com/app/id874139669

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 :-)

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.

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?

I used it to successfully donate $5 without issue. Changing the dollar amount seemed to work for me.

Hmm, thanks. It must have been some ad blocker issue, I'll try an incognito window.

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.

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.

There is no such thing as low latency anonymity.

Wardriving?

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.

There isn't enough RF bandwidth and batteries aren't good enough to support this.

>There is no such thing as low latency anonymity.

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.

You realize that Canada is part of the evil five eyes.

"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.

Great job guys! I'm a big fan of what whisper systems is doing. Why is this not called redphone though? Does it have different features?

Edit: Looks like the article says it is part of a plan to merge redphone and textsecure.

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.

Who is Riddle Quiet Ventures, LLC? They appear to be the "seller in the App Store"

Why is Signal (the app) free? What's the business model?

Open source. Donations.

https://pressfreedomfoundation.org/bundle/encryption-tools-j...

Donations is not a business model.

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.

It is for Wikipedia. Otherwise no open source project has a "business model".

There are approximately 1.1 million public charities in the US that'd disagree with you.

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.

See - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whisper_Systems

There's no need to be so cynical with this lot.

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.

I wish they had text messaging. I've been waiting so long for this and it lacks the major feature we need! Hopefully it'll come soon.

The reason why this is important these days is that law enforcement now has more access (because the technology is cheaper) to fake cell towers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_phone_tracker

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)?

    Later this summer, Signal for iPhone will be expanded to support text communication compatible with TextSecure for Android.

You'll have to wait to wait a little. I'd bet it will be worth.

Can a Stingray intercept iMessages?

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.

IMessages are supposed to be encrypted, so no.

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.

http://blog.quarkslab.com/imessage-privacy.html

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".

It uses only data

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.

I installed it on my iPhone. I'm able to discover and call friends that have RedPhone, but they can't see me. Is that a feature or a bug :P

Hey. Could you please file a bug report at https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-iOS/issues ? We'll try to work with you to fix the the issue. Thanks!

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?

Does anyone know what the userbase of Redphone is? Is it the same as Textsecure (around 10 milions)?

"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?

They've blogged a bit about this challenge in the past:

https://whispersystems.org/blog/contact-discovery/

Ah, thanks!

It looks like it uses bloom filters for the phone number:

isCntactRegisteredWithWhisper calls isPhoneNumberRegisteredWithWhisper:

https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-iOS/blob/19ff47e278...

The implementation is simply checking a bloom filter:

https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-iOS/blob/19ff47e278...

… and the filter is periodically downloaded from their servers:

https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-iOS/blob/19ff47e278...

which ultimately ends up at:

https://master.whispersystems.org:31337/users/directory

Congrats Jake and the WhisperSystems crew! :D Can't wait to see you in a few weeks bud.

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.

Um. Isn't encrypted calling on iPhones already provided by FaceTime Audio?

I'm sure there is no real end-to-end encryption. And you can only do that between iPhone/Mac users.

> 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."

https://ssl.apple.com/iphone/business/docs/iOS_Security_Feb1...

> And you can only do that between iPhone/Mac users.

Ah yeah, I thought Signal was only for iPhone, based on the title. Should have read the first paragraph more closely.

>This product, Signal, seems to only be for iPhones. So it's even more limited.

It appears to interoperate with RedPhone, an Android app by the same authors.

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."

Which has been refuted several times.

Yes, but it is not secure

"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]

[1] https://ssl.apple.com/iphone/business/docs/iOS_Security_Feb1...

This does not mean that it's secure. See for example http://www.zdnet.com/apples-imessage-encryption-claims-refut... and http://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2013/06/can-apple-re...

They claim to use SIP to establish an SRTP connection with AES-256. But I don't know any way to verify that the data is being encrypted well or sent only to the intended recipient. https://ssl.apple.com/iphone/business/docs/iOS_Security_Feb1...

> But I don't know any way to verify that the data is being encrypted well or sent only to the intended recipient.

Couldn't you say the same thing about Signal? Both parties claim to use end-to-end encryption.

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.

There is value in being able to call people who do not have iOS devices. This is more similar to SilentCircle, but without a monthly fee.

Yes. And you should probably assume that their claims of end-to-end encryption are about as solid as they were for iMessage.

http://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2013/06/can-apple-re...

http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/06/can-apple-read-your-...

http://www.zdnet.com/apples-imessage-encryption-claims-refut...

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."

[1] http://images.apple.com/iphone/business/docs/iOS_Security_Fe...

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.

Ah yes, of course. It's missing secure identification.

It's refreshing to see the rebrand (RedPhone -> Signal) links security with functionality, rather than with something dramatic/hide-worthy.

When your tools are secure, they work for you and not the other way around.

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?

Next step, no phone number required for accounts!

Curious why this is different than RedPhone - same company, same product(?), diff't platform - why not keep app branding?

Signal is better branding.

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.

Makes sense - do you know if they will be re-branding RedPhone on Android? Just curious.

From the linked page:

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.

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."

This seems really neat. I tried it on an iOS 8 device and it hung on the verification screen. Is anyone else seeing that?

Is anyone else having trouble registering the app? I'm not receiving a SMS validation code.

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."

You will have the opportunity to request another call in about 15 minutes

Thanks! That worked. Messaging suggestion for future version: set a countdown timer for when they can request another call.

Could theoretically be nice, if it would actually work.

Teligram should add this feature.

Telegram should get their crypto straight, publish their server-side code and federate to OpenWhisperSystems federation.

"What could possibly go wrong?" I mean, besides the fact that it runs on iphones.

Distributing secure text/voice/video calls app through an app store of any kind is by definition not secure. Give me an .apk

Nice try, but pointless and snake oil, since the iPhone is not a secure device.

Try building a secure device that users "own" first, then spend effort on building secure services on top.

Nice idea, but in the real world you need to create a service that people "use" first, then spend effort on building a secure device.

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.

Security works in layers, and unfortunately consumers want the wrong layer first.

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.

[1] https://pentest.com/ios_backdoors_attack_points_surveillance...

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.

Tor was created by the US

Open Whisper Systems is fund by the Shuttleworth Foundation.

https://www.shuttleworthfoundation.org/about-us/team/

Moxie is a fellow of the Foundation:

https://www.shuttleworthfoundation.org/fellowship/fellows/cu...

But it appears he personally only "helps" Open Whisper Systems:

http://www.thoughtcrime.org/blog/we-should-all-have-somethin...

"I help work on Open Source security and privacy apps at Open Whisper Systems"

On more accurate side, see also 2013 report of Open Technology Fund which granted 445K USD directly to the Open Whisper Systems in 2013.

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."

If anybody questions the article, it's still documented directly on the fund's site:

Open technology fund 2013 report:

https://www.opentechfund.org/sites/default/files/attachments...

"Open Whisper Systems $455,000"

https://www.opentechfund.org/about

"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)"

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