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Heml.is, New Encrypted Messaging Service From Brokep of the Pirate Bay
First time accepted submitter freddej writes "Heml.is ("secret" in Swedish), is a new peer encrypted messaging service from some of the guys behind TPB and Flattr. They describe it as this: 'Our focus is your privacy so we are building everything from software to company structure to protect that. The others are focused on maximizing profit.' So if you agree on the mantra that 'if you're not paying, you're the product' then you might want to check them out."
Caveats: they are begging for money and there is no mention whether this will be Free Software or some kind of proprietary service (in which case, how can you really trust it?). It looks more likely it will be a closed application/service: "We're building a message app where no one can listen in, not even us. We would rather close down the service before letting anyone in ... [what will codes unlock?] It will give you access to extended features of Heml.is like sending image messages and other stuff in the future. Pre-register username will let you register your username before the app is released."
Predicted this. First of many products that will try to offer security in lieu of ads after the Snowden leaks. I feel smart today. It's funding faster than a kickstarter... this gives me a page to refresh today instead of the dislikes on that Miley Cyrus video - good times that one.
The certificate is not trusted because no issuer chain was provided.
Sorry but I threw out all of my iOS/Android devices when Snowden blew that whistle.
Predicted this. First of many products that will try to offer security in lieu of ads after the Snowden leaks. I feel smart today. It's funding faster than a kickstarter... this gives me a page to refresh today instead of the dislikes on that Miley Cyrus video - good times that one.
Without going all "conspiracy theory" here, what if this is part of a secret arrangement with the secret police for each of the founders to get out of secret jail avoid the secret prosecution and additional secret jail time?
To paraphrase Admiral Ackbar, this could be an elaborate ruse. Realistically though? Its an excellent idea to cash in on the concept of the right to privacy.
- Nec Impar Pluribus, or so I'm told.
This one already exists and looks pretty decent:
https://threema.ch/en/
Helmis is not secret in swedish. Hemlig is. Hemlis is a slang version used by tots.
What good will this do if they've backdoored your device and are reading the keyboard input and taking screenshots?
There are no atheists when recovering from tape backup.
Many clients already support OTR: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-the-Record_Messaging#Native
Many clients have plugins for OTR: http://www.cypherpunks.ca/otr/
How is this any more secure than a locked down SSH server (& Locked down user accounts) that runs an IRC Client when bash is called and connects via loopback/SSL to an IRC server?
If this is a serious contender to say a darknet, or to Retroshare, then I might be interested.
When you try to eradicate anything and fail you only succeed in make it stronger and more menacing.
It's true in medicine with antibiotics and bacteria, it's true in nature with mosquitoes and the various failed attempts to defeat their spread of malaria.
Skype was born from the technology to evade detection and network filtering (Kazaa).
First time I fire up Skype I couldn't believe the complexity of the networking it got into.
A close friend, who worked in networking with me, un-installed it immediately as it looked like a trojan at the network layer.
TPB people have learned some very hard lessons about evasion, law and staying alive online under extreme hostilities.
It'll be interesting to see what the next "Skype" will be and this could be either it, or one more step towards it.
On the other hand, such a certificate may be redundant in the case of a properly P2P process, as TFS suggests re their app. However, I can't see any reason why they need one for their homepage, which (from having looked at the content in Links) shouldn't need https at all.
Peter Sunde will run for European Parliament in 2014 election with Pirate Party of Finland. Quite impossible to think any intelligent person not voting for him.
So let me get this straight: it's closed source, will have "premium features" for paid apps, AND they want $100k? Yeah, no, they can go shove it up their ass.
So it's impossible to think there are intelligent people outside of Finland?
It all boils down to trusting a company once again.
Peter Sunde will run for European Parliament in 2014 election with Pirate Party of Finland. Quite impossible to think any intelligent person not voting for him.
Indeed his ideas on medical healthcare, social welfare, military spending and road infrastructure are renowned and undeniable.
Quite impossible to think any intelligens person would care for anything besides those particular issues.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
I agree 100 per cent. And I must add that all these so called crypto or secure apps that don't hide the fact of connections are absolutely unsafe. If the FSB (KGB, Russian equivalent of NSA) can compile my contact list they can just torture the content out of them. There is a specific Russian term - "rectothermal cryptoanalyzer" (meaning the hot soldering iron to suspect's anus).
BTW: Hemlis is suspicious because the usernames must be preregistered. The really secure app should have no any central server for the registration info. The admins of such server can be too easily tortured to disclose or stop everything.
The fundamental problem of the next Skype is that any attempt to produce a really anonymous network will need lots of nodes in delivery chain and will correspondingly produce too long delays, but texting-only app suffers at least since users cannot verify their correspondents by known voice. And you should not trust a network where the intermediary nodes are not under direct control of participants since they all may belong to FSB (KGB, NSA, aso).
What about torchat, it is supposed to be encrypted, anonymous, decentralized and open source, does not anyone use it?
... which works for local communications even when the internet itself is down. Importantly, this is an application that already exists. Plus everything we're doing is open source and we'll never lock any features behind a paywall.
I've been working on Serval's software for a couple of years now building the core feature set; encrypted calling and messaging, distributed phone number lookups, file distribution, software updates and installs in the field...
But since we're initially targeting android phones, we're stuck with the range limitations of Wi-Fi. So we're trying to fund the design and manufacture of a pocket sized device with much longer range (totally shameless plug).
There's still a few missing features in our software that we'll need to finish before we call it version 1.0. But with a enough funding I could easily build a P2P directory to provide services across the internet. With no centrally controlled servers at all.
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
Is this any better or more useful than the service Cryptocat (https://crypto.cat/)? Seems like a duplication of efforts to me.
Any application intended to resist modern government surveillance is going to be extremely difficult to write, because it has to be resistant to bogus secret "court orders". The only way I know to do that is to have many independent developers engage in multi-party signatures of reproducible builds based on audited and reviewed open source code. If they're just going to run a company that develops it in a proprietary manner how will they achieve that?
I am more interested in Pond. It's being written by an actual cryptographer and he already has real, working code (though it's nowhere near releasable). It's up front about its security model and which threats can break it. It's built on top of Tor and even supports using the TPM chip so that when you press delete, the data is really really gone beyond the ability of any forensics tools to recover. It's even designed to resist traffic analysis. Anyone can run a server.
The main differences are that, obviously, Pond is not developed by a company, and it is focussed on asynchronous email style messaging rather than instant messaging. It's also got a very strong threat model that means it compromises on usability - for instance, there are no addresses in Pond, instead you are expected to hand out small files (perhaps on NFC tags?) to people who you want to be able to receive messages from (this is an anti-spam measure).
Despite all that it's a very interesting piece of research.
Tormail is free and already well established.
Indeed his ideas on medical healthcare, social welfare, military spending and road infrastructure are renowned and undeniable.
Quite impossible to think any intelligens person would care for anything besides those particular issues.
Well, look at the alternatives. Every other candidate is all about removing your rights. What good is roads if you can't travel freely? What good is the military if it is used against you?
None of the other issues matters at all until the freedom part is fixed.
Also I wouldn't call his ideas on those subjects renowned. They are just not very radical. Pretty much like the other candidates.
oh, quite the opposite
What kind of logic is that? I look like a Mexican AND like an Arab too. Doesn't mean I go suicide-bomb some pools or crops </stereotypes>. :P
If you know what I mean...
Your "trojan" detection clearly is off.
I worked in Cisco System R&D on IOS for 12 years (1994-2006).
I have patents on network monitoring specific to NetFlow (or Flexible NetFlow) which came from being on the team that redesigned Cisco's netflow on IOS.
That's how I spotted what Skype was doing, and so did my colleague.
We had Cisco routers at home, running our own dev code, watching our own home network traffic.
He thought the skype traffic looked like something a Trojan would do, but since neither of us worked in Anti-virus software or hacking, what would we know? :)
I, being less paranoid, stuck with Skype as I figure it was just being clever in avoiding network filtering.
After all why would the telco's, who provide our networks, let some hackers from Sweden steal all their long distance voice calls...?
If the email client simply generated a private/public key pair, and attacked the public key, tracking an building up confidence in the public key associated with each email address, then your Facebook friends wouldn't care.
It would just work, as OTR does now.
As Skype use to work, before MS bought them and backdoored it.
This android app (currently under development for iOS) is open source (github.com/surespot) and gaining momentum. "Exceptional encryption for everyone."
https://www.surespot.me/
Disclaimer: I know the developer.
This android app (currently under development for iOS) is open source (github.com/surespot) and gaining momentum. "Exceptional encryption for everyone."
https://www.surespot.me/
Disclaimer: I know the developer.
"I either want less corruption, or more chance
to participate in it." -- Ashleigh Brilliant
It's a proprietary service, so you don't know if they're doing what they say they are. Forget it. Absolutely rediculous - it's the same problem we have now in that few people really know what's going on. Let the project drown.
Totally! He is the only one helping me to pirate "Game of Thrones!" He is fighting on *my* side!
Before you care about those issues one way or another, you've got to care about your freedom and ability to actually make a difference on either of those issues.
If you have no power, if the spy agencies are in charge and could manipulate the majority's public opinion on those issues any way they wanted, what would it matter what you thought about them?
Democracy first, then politics.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
Everybody has always lived with the possibility that their government (or anyone who is powerful) might decide to use violence against them. It can happen if you don't encrypt, too. Maybe your plaintext didn't happen to contain the information they wanted. Or maybe they're just sadistic bastards. You've premised a powerful and psychopathic adversary, so I think even your best case scenarios are pretty bad. IMHO that's all the more reason to encrypt.
But violence is much harder to get away with, undetected, compared to passive plaintext capturing. Somebody's going to notice that people are missing. People knew about the gulags. And even Stalin couldn't "process" people as fast as a modern computer can process plaintext. (And lots of people will balk too; maybe your FSB is more steel-hearted but I think in USA we'd likely end up with a few thousand Snowdens in the first week. (And yes, some psychos too; I'm not denying that, I just think not everyone would go that way.))
When the adversary brandishes his $5 wrench, the crypto-nerd might be in for the worst (and last) night of his life, but the big game is one step closer to being over and the wrench guys are looking at a good possibility of seeing a firing squad, noose or guillotine. And it's really hard to believe that seeing ciphertext will just happen to be the one thing that pushes them over the edge, from civilized protector of the nation, to enemy of the people. You were going to get into a violent conflict with them anyway. If you really think FSB is start going to do that to most Russian citizens who use the Internet but check the "encrypt" box, then you ought to start killing them now.
I think protecting the freedom of speech, democracy, human rights and civil liberties is the new 'environmental' issue that matters the most. And it appears the pirate party is the most active in resisting human-right supressing stasi-like activities... and quite frankly I don't care that much for Sunde's or pirate party's other ideas or priorities.
;)
In the 80's green party movement/party was a great political invention, which eventually helped in ending the acid rains, CFC-freons, overuse of farm pesticides and other nasty things. The industry would not have stopped poisoning the environment without a clear political guidance. For me the pirate party is like the 80's green party movement... this time it's just protecting humans instead/besides the nature. Ok, not everybody needs to have these political priorities
Exactly how much of Finland's medical health care, social welfare, military spending and road infrastructure will be determined by the European Parliament? Yes that is right, exactly nothing.
And even if it where, Finland has 14 seats so that would leave 13 to deal with those issues.
ultra-social.com - for iOS and Android. Twitter only.
What's wrong with email+gpg and xmpp+gpg? Did it get broken? Why the need for a new protocol?
Obligatory XKCD: http://xkcd.com/927/