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Skype Co-Founder Launches End-To-End Encrypted 'Wire' App (reuters.com)
An anonymous reader writes: A group of former Skype technologists, backed by the co-founder of the messaging platform, has introduced a new version of its own messaging service that promises end-to-end encryption for all conversations, including by video. Wire, a 50-person start-up mostly made up of engineers, is stepping into a global political debate over encryption that pits privacy against security advocates, epitomized by the standoff between the U.S. government and Apple. Wire, which is headquartered in Switzerland and Germany, two of the most privacy-friendly countries in the world, relays communications through its network of cloud computers where user communications are stored, in encrypted form, on their own devices. It delivers privacy protections that are always on, even when callers use multiple devices, such as a phone or desktop PC simultaneously. For voice and video calls, Wire uses the same DTLS and SRTP encryption standards found in the peer-to-peer WebRTC protocol. Rivals such as Facebook's Messenger and WhatsApp or Telegram offer encryption on only parts of a message's journey or for a specific set of services, the company said. "Everything is end-to-end encrypted: That means voice and video calls, texts, pictures, graphics -- all the content you can send," Wire Executive Chairman Janus Friis told Reuters.
Using the Service to communicate by chat, our servers store the content of your chat conversation and log other information such as the time and date of your conversations, and the other user or users with whom you are communicating.
Kind of awkward if that means what I think it means.
-SR
If it gets popular they'll just sell it out to some company that will gut the shit out of any privacy it has.
JUST LIKE SKYPE.
Go fuck yourself dude. Fooled us once already.
promises to attract who is "of interest" to Signals Intelligence.
and we know how "secure" Skype was
http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/~s...
looking at the Skype binary its obvious that even MS cant see inside the box as their "enhancements" are tacked around the original encrypted binary.
just remake the original Skype like it was, ie firewall traversal, p2p, ee encryption, crystal clear audio/video oh and this time fully open source (unlike this Wire).
Wire appears to compete with Signal. And there are others, some of which the EFF has reviewed: https://www.eff.org/secure-mes...
And to think, the NSA still bugs the network feeds at both ends, if it wants, under super-NDA, without a court-order or any other kind of oversight at all, really.
Idiots?
Oh please! Tell me you won't take a billion or two. And so what? They're making another service. If they sell it, they might make another after that, turtles all the way down. Just move to the next service they create. If I remember right, Skype encryption was difficult to break. So call this one version 2, and ignore Microsoft's version.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
1. They claim that wire is free (as in beer).
2. They claim that wire protects your data and privacy.
3. They claim that wire runs no ads.
4. They run a profit oriented company, not an open source foundation, and I have heard nothing about their business model
Its easy to confirm claims 1, 3 and 4. Its very hard to confirm claim 2. What do they want to make money with?
Am I supposed to believe they are altruist?
Just don't look at the bit in the middle, but both ends are encrypted.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Surprised didn't have a seizure just scrolling down their main page.
4.2 Types of Usage Data
Wire client applications collect several types of usage data:
+ Crash Reports
+ Viewed screens data
+Aggregated usage statistics
+App events data
4.2.1 Crash reports
4.2.2 Aggregated usage statistics
Ummm... WTF happened to the description paragraph for Viewed Screens Data?
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have backups to corrupt.
Or maybe he dumped it on a couple of suckers, and the new version is better. Being end-to-end is an improvement for what it's worth. It would be silly not to take the deal when you're giving up something already obsolete. Damn thing could be a honeypot, who knows? I wouldn't use a damn computer if I wanted privacy anyway. Please, save save the righteous indignation for the big screen. It's so overdone.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Skype has a huge installation base despite it being insecure since Microsoft's purchase of Skype. I cannot get anyone in my social circle to dump Skype in favour of any already out there encrypted IM or video chat.
Apart from that, Skype is a load of bloated junk on Windows, and on Linux, it hasn't been updated in years.. maybe a good thing in some respects. It doesn't get proper integration with PulseAudio and KDE, and is still a 32 bit only install (for non-Deb installs). Skype is the only 32 bit application that I have to install a lot of 32 bit junk on a 64 bit machine.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
I'll believe it when they release the source code. (Because obviously they're going to do that, right?)
When AES was first introduced, the entire encryption / decription was done in RAM. That RAM execution meant that to discover the keys would require many computers running in parallel, in a divide and conquer approach.
And then along came Intel with the integrated AES instruction. Substantially faster than the RAM version, so much so, that now, instead of say 50 computers to break the AES encryption, it could be done with 25. And with Skylake, (I7), used in a bank of computers, my gut feeling is that any AES encryption can be broken in a week or less.
Its time to reconsider Bruce Schnier's algorithms (twofish, followed by Cypher Block Chaining). If I were to build a secure encryption algorithm, I would not use AES.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada