Kim Dotcom's Mega Again Announces Encrypted Browser-Based Chat Service

An anonymous reader writes Kim Dotcom, founder of file hosting service Mega, revealed his company will be launching a browser-based chat service "soon." Dotcom referred to the service with the hashtag #MegaChat, though he confirmed with VentureBeat that this may not be its final name. This is not the first time Dotcom has talked about the upcoming service, which gets mentioned every few months but has yet to hit public availability in any form. There is naturally a lot of hype surrounding it, given the increasing importance put on secure communications on the Internet.

Comments

Re:3259-845gfbgfsdv03r45gvv

[BreakBad]

Bah-weep-Graaaaagnah wheep ni ni bong

Will it be open source?

[schwit1]

http://www.spiegel.de/internat...

"Experts agree it is far more difficult for intelligence agencies to manipulate open source software programs than many of the closed systems developed by companies like Apple and Microsoft. Since anyone can view free and open source software, it becomes difficult to insert secret back doors without it being noticed."

Re:Will it be open source?

[CastrTroy]

Since it runs in the browser, what does it matter if it is open source? You'll have to check the code each time you visit the web page to ensure that the code which they say you are running is what you are actually running. The browser is a terrible place for trying to run secure code. Browser extensions can basically do whatever they want, and you'll have to check every browser extension you're using to verify that they aren't listening in on what you are doing. Why not just make a chat client that communicates in a secure way. I really don't see much advantage of having the application run in the browser. Sure, it almost automatically makes it cross platform, but also makes it quite difficult to secure properly.

Re:Will it be open source?

[bloodhawk]

people seem to think a secret backdoor has to be some obvious piece of code like if(password="Joshua") then return access_granted; The truth is open source or closed source can be riddled with backdoors and you would never know it, even a good reviewer will just see them as a security coding error such as a convenient buffer overflow.

Re:I was waiting for this!

[tomhath]

Can someone explain why we should care that he announced vaporware (again)?

Re:3259-845gfbgfsdv03r45gvv

[oodaloop]

Mod parent informative!

Because Mega hires no bad guys amd doesn't get wat

[raymorris]

Kim Dotcom is of course exactly who I would trust with my secrets, he wouldn't let anything out that the producer of the content doesn't want released. Certainly all of his associates doing the actual work on the system are of the highest moral fiber.

Okay, maybe not, but at least his chat servers won't be the target of any surveillance by anyone else, so I can feel secure that only mega can read and publicize my messages.

Pidgin with OTR

[ShaunC]

Is there any reason to believe that Pidgin with OTR is not reasonably secure? Competition is always a good thing, so the more services the merrier, but I'm curious what others think about existing offerings.

Jitsi did it.

[gavron]

Jit.si is open source encrypted chat that works on any chrome browser.

It's nice of Kim Dotcom to one day have an alternative... but smoke and vaporware can't compete with an existing working solution.

E

Hello?

[caspy7]

Why not Mozilla's Hello service?

It's browser-based, encrypted, open source and P2P.
You do currently have to use Firefox to generate the initial URL to share (but that will hopefully be remedied in the near future).