On 19 August 2014 23:15, Tony Arcieri <[email protected]> wrote: > On Tue, Aug 19, 2014 at 9:09 PM, Arne Renkema-Padmos > <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> About communication of the fingerprint over the phone: maybe JackPair >> has some relevant insights? >> >> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/620001568/jackpair-safeguard-your-phone-conversation > > > This has to be one of the worst ideas I've seen in recent history.
Disagree :) > We start with a Smartphone completely ready to be a handset for an encrypted > telephony app like RedPhone or Signal. Well, not always. Sometimes we start with a flip burner phone, or a POTS line, or a device without a radio (iPod), etc. > Except we don't trust it or something? So we try to airgap an encryption key > into a special purpose physical hardware. If you have a smartphone, you're right you probably do trust it. But the ability to airgap onto dedicated hardware is desirable for a small percentage of people. I don't know if it's enough to support tremendous development in the area, but I would like to see some excursions into it. > Both parties need the same device > to communicate. That's a lot harder than an app... Harder is relative. Harder to distribute physically: yes. Harder to use or understand: I'm not so certain. I would _love_ to see a usability study of Signal, RedPhone, and this. > Except... if we don't trust our phone to do encryption, why are we using it > to make encrypted phone calls? If we're making POTS calls, we're on a > network that can triangulate our location I'm not sure why you're mixing content encryption with location privacy. > , and if someone has compromised a > Smartphone enough to get encryption keys, they can probably use your > handset's microphone (or accelerometer) to figure out what you're saying. I have strong doubts about accelerometer-based audio pickup in real-world settings. It sounds a lot like stunt hacking to me. If one compromises a smartphone thoroughly, yes, you should be able to exfiltrate plaintext audio through the handset mic. I see JackPair as many things, all of which I want to encourage: a) Open source encryption HARDWARE (I think...) b) Low-Cost (not as low as I'd like, but still low) dedicated hardware devices c) With hardcoded keys in a second-generation device, this becomes a MITM-proof device that requires no key distribution: hand off the device and key distribution is done d) Tackling 'legacy' cellular and POTS networks head-on -tom _______________________________________________ Messaging mailing list [email protected] https://moderncrypto.org/mailman/listinfo/messaging
