The New Yorker Launches 'Strongbox' For Secure Anonymous Leaks

Today The New Yorker unveiled a project called Strongbox, which aims to let sources share tips and leaks with the news organization in a secure manner. It makes use of the TOR network and encrypts file uploads with PGP. Once the files are uploaded, they're transferred via thumb-drive to a laptop that isn't connected to the internet, which is erased every time it is powered on and booted with a live CD. The publication won't record any details about your visit, so even a government request to look at their records will fail to find any useful information. "There’s a growing technology gap: phone records, e-mail, computer forensics, and outright hacking are valuable weapons for anyone looking to identify a journalist’s source. With some exceptions, the press has done little to keep pace: our information-security efforts tend to gravitate toward the parts of our infrastructure that accept credit cards." Strongbox is actually just The New Yorker's version of a secure information-sharing platform called DeadDrop, built by Aaron Swartz shortly before his death. DeadDrop is free software.

Comments

Re:Is it in a bunker ?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

I'm not sure I want to use that, it sounds cursed.

Why, yes, it's black magic; he killed himself so that his fresh code would be imbued with his life force, giving a spirit guardian to the software and thereby making any hacking attempt instantly fatal to government cloak-and-port-mapper types. Fork it on Github right now!