Twitter Buys Moxie Marlinspike's Crypto Startup

Sparrowvsrevolution writes "Twitter has confirmed that it's acquiring Whisper Systems, the mobile encryption startup founded by hacker and security researcher Moxie Marlinspike. Marlinspike has built some of the most noteworthy tools in applied cryptography over the last few years, including the encrypted calling app Redphone, the hardened Android OS WhisperCore, and Convergence, a system for fixing the broken SSL certificate authority system. Twitter won't yet say how it plans to integrate Marlinspike or his products."

Comments

Re:Great

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I'm pretty sure Whisper System's business model was finding some stupid, bigger company to buy it. And Twitter's business model is definitely to find a large group of stupid people to buy their IPO. So as my PHB would say, there's definitely a sort of synergy to their respective corporate strategies.

Re:His projects have disappeared

[loftwyr]

From their updates page:

"The Transition:

The Whisper Systems software as our users know it will live on (and we have some surprises in store that we're excited about), but there is unfortunately a transition period where we will have to temporarily take our products and services offline. RedPhone service will be interrupted immediately, but FlashBack users have a month to pull off any backup data they would like before that service also goes offline. "

Re:Great

[Beardo the Bearded]

What could possibly go wrong?

If you're a totalitarian regime that cripples the communication of your country to beat the shit out of the populace, plenty.

Twitter has been fucking up countries. Once you get encrypted twitter, it's going to get a lot harder to stay in charge.