'Vanish' Makes Sensitive Data Self-Destruct

Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports on new software called 'Vanish,' developed by computer scientists at the University of Washington, which makes sensitive electronic messages 'self destruct' after a certain period of time. The researchers say they have struck upon a unique approach that relies on 'shattering' an encryption key that is held by neither party in an e-mail exchange, but is widely scattered across a peer-to-peer file sharing system. 'Our goal was really to come up with a system where, through a property of nature, the message, or the data, disappears,' says Amit Levy, who helped create Vanish. It has been released as a free, open-source tool that works with Firefox. To use Vanish, both the sender and the recipient must have installed the tool. The sender then highlights any sensitive text entered into the browser and presses the 'Vanish' button. The tool encrypts the information with a key unknown even to the sender. That text can be read, for a limited time only, when the recipient highlights the text and presses the 'Vanish' button to unscramble it. After eight hours, the message will be impossible to unscramble and will remain gibberish forever. Tadayoshi Kohno says Vanish makes it possible to control the 'lifetime' of any type of data stored in the cloud, including information on Facebook, Google documents or blogs."

Comments

Re:Let's not kid ourselves

[John Hasler]

> A fancy "vanish" button?

Yes. The average PHB might just barely have the intellectual capacity to deal with that.

Re:We already have better tools for that

[FnH]

And now Vanish is the trusted third party .. I'll stick with Public Key Crypto.

Whatever the reasons public key encryption hasn't taken off (too much effort, no perceived threat, ...), it will be those same exact reasons that will prevent Vanish from taking off.

poor man's encryption

[drougie]

I discovered this bulletproof form of encryption in the early nineties. Doesn't require any software and all both parties need to do is know how to touch type without looking at the keyboard. Basically you shift your hands one key to the right (rest your index fingers on g and k) and type as you normally would but without looking at the keys. Not even rainbow tables can break this. See, watch:

the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dogs.
ujr wiovl ntpem gpc ki,[d pbrt yjr ;sxu fphd/

All the other guy needs to do is shift his hands one key to the left (index fingers on d and h), he starts retyping the encrypted code and bam, rock solid and convenient encryption with no packet overhead. May not work on binary code [yet]. And I don't know if it's legal or too strong for the government (IANAL ... or should I say, osms;).