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PGP Creator's Zfone Encrypts VoIP

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the so-stupid-easy-i-can-use-it dept.

Philip Zimmermann, creator of PGP wrote in to tell me about Zfone, his new system for encrypting any SIP VoIP voice stream. His first release is Mac & Linux only. I tested it with him using Gizmo as our client and it was pretty trivial to use. While it should work on most any SIP compatible VoIP client, he hopes that clients like OpenWengo and Gizmo will incorporate Zfone directly into the UI. Zfone has no centralization, and has been submitted to the IETF. He hasn't yet determined a license, but he believes strongly in releasing source code for all encryption products. A windows client is forthcoming.

4 of 150 comments (clear)

  1. My only concern by QuaintRealist · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ...is that the US (yes, I live there) will use security fears relating to terrorism to ban or severely restrict this technology. Some elements of our government seem almost Luddite (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite) these days.

    Sad, because this kind of encryption would permit greater use of this technology in medicine under HIPPA privacy regulations.

    --
    Using plain ol' text since 1968
  2. Why not encrypt by default by Matt+Perry · · Score: 5, Interesting
    This article has me wondering about something. Why aren't we encrypting things by default? Why isn't encryption being built into the protocol when it's designed? It always seems that it gets tacked on afterwards, if at all, and we're worse off in the long run for it. Take VNC for example. If you want that encrypted you're told to send it over SSH. Wouldn't it be great if VNC traffic was encryped by design right from the start? The same applies to any other traffic (VoIP, IM, whatever). What happens is that many people don't encrypt because of the difficultly or they don't know any better. Unencrypted traffic is sent putting them at risk.

    We know the network is hostile and retrofitting encryption onto something after the fact doesn't always work either because too many people using the unencrypted protocol, it's too hard to configure (as opposed to being mostly automatic like ssh connections), or just general security ignorance. What's really holding us back?

    --
    Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
  3. Related project by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    There was a presentation from another group (wasn't Phil, although he was there) at DefCon 13 relating to reverse-engineering the GSM voice compression so that data could be fed through a GSM voice link accoustically with almost no overhead (in other words, at close to the GSM native digital bandwidth). The intent being to provide a means to attach accoustic peripherals (handsfree headset for example) that could perform encryption and send the encrypted, digitized voice over the GSM link accoustically (to be recieved and decoded by a similar device on the other end), thus allowing encrypted voice communication over an untrusted and unmodified cell phone without the need to install any software.

  4. My security fears by webweave · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I don't live in the US but I live very close and almost all of my IP traffic travels through the US at some point and my worry is that any business information collected by the US/CIA/FBI or other US agency would be made available to US companies. There have been court cases in the past of US sponsored spying benefiting US companies. They say they are after terrorist but who knows? With the knowledge of past activities of US spies and the current computing power of the US agencies all foreign businesses would be well advised to encrypt all sensitive information.

    http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/1994/05/dr eyfuss.html

    http://web.nps.navy.mil/~relooney/4141_Spring2002. pdf

    http://www.commondreams.org/headlines/070200-02.ht m

    Not using encryption is to believe GWB when he says "Trust me"