http://blogs.forbes.com/firewall/2010/05/25/android-app-aims-to-allow-wiretap-proof-cell-phone-calls/ By Andy Greenberg The Firewall Forbes.com May 25, 2010 Worried about the NSA, the FBI, criminals or cyberspies electronically eavedropping on your private phone calls? There may be an untappable app for that. On Tuesday, an independent hacker and security researcher who goes by the handle Moxie Marlinspike and his Pittsburgh-based startup Whisper Systems launched free public betas for two new privacy-focused programs on Google's Android mobile platform: RedPhone, a voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) program that encrypts phone calls, and TextSecure, an app for sending and receiving encrypted text messages and scrambling the messages stored in their inbox. Marlinspike says the apps will interface with users' contact lists and other functions on the phone to take the hassle out of making calls and sending texts that can't be eavesdropped by third parties. "Our main aim is to make this as easy as possible," he says. "We want it to be a secure and anonymous drop-in replacement for the normal dialing system on your phone." RedPhone uses ZRTP, an open source Internet voice cryptography scheme created by Phil Zimmermann, inventor of the widely-used Pretty Good Privacy or PGP encryption. When a caller dials another RedPhone user, the app uses the two users' keys to create a simple passphrase ("flatfoot eskimo" or "slingshot millionaire," for example) and display it on each phone, allowing the speakers to verify that the codes match, and that there's no man-in-the-middle intercepting the call. [...] _______________________________________________ Best Selling Security Books and More! Shop InfoSec News http://www.shopinfosecnews.org/Received on Tue May 25 2010 - 22:46:46 PDT
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