Secure Communication Comes To Android

An anonymous reader writes "Forbes is reporting that Moxie Marlinspike and Stuart Anderson's startup, Whisper Systems, has released a public beta of two Android applications that provide encrypted call and SMS capabilities for your Android phone. In the wake of recent GSM attacks, it'll be interesting to see if smartphones end up providing a platform that fundamentally changes the security we can expect from mobile communication."

Comments

Sure it will

[d1r3lnd]

Just like encrypted email! Everyone uses that...

Moxie Marlinspike

[Obama]

Moxie Marlinspike, there's that guy again! Wish I had a recognizable name like him.

the solution is Klingon

[MoFoQ]

it just reminds me that I really need to start speaking in Klingon more frequently.

Re:the solution is Klingon

[biryokumaru]

I've been using Romulan for years and no one's been able to crack it yet.

Jolan tru!

Re:Disappointed that they released w/o source code

[phantomcircuit]

Probably removing all the colorful comments :P

Re:Less useful

[Civil_Disobedient]

Uh, so?

You know, telephones aren't terribly useful, either. Because the person on the other end has to have a phone as well. Completely impractical compared to yelling.

Re:Less useful

[PopeRatzo]

Ok, how many people do you know that have Android phones?

Me, my wife, and my daughter.

The reed player in my band (the other three players have iPhones or non-smart phones).

I was at a school board meeting earlier in the month and the soccer mom sitting next to me had a Droid. The kid who lives next door and who has bragged to me that he owns an Xbox, a PS3 and a Wii has an HTC android phone. He says "iPhones are for pussies".

I passed that last part along for informational purposes only. I do not endorse that sentiment in any way, mostly because I wouldn't want some offended iPhone user to give me such a slap.

Re:Slashdotter's rejoice!

[Sir_Lewk]

Use your imagination. It is extremely trivial to make encrypted data look like text. Hell, you can even make it look statistically like english. You'd have that character limit thing to worry about, but I believe most phones these days "get around that" by transparently using multiple messages at once.