GnuPG for Android progress: we have an command line app!

 Posted on May 9, 2013  |  Hans-Christoph Steiner

This alpha release of our command-line developer tool brings GnuPG to Android for the first time! GNU Privacy Guard Command-Line (gpgcli) gives you command line access to the entire GnuPG suite of encryption software. GPG is GNU’s tool for end-to-end secure communication and encrypted data storage. This trusted protocol is the free software alternative to PGP. GnuPG 2.1 is the new modularized version of GnuPG that now supports OpenPGP and S/MIME. [Read More]
Android  encryption  gnupg  gpg  oi2  open source  openpgp  pgp  preview  psst 

IOCipher beta: easy encrypted file storage for your Android app

 Posted on February 7, 2013  |  Hans-Christoph Steiner

At long last, we are proud to announce the first beta release of IOCipher, an easy framework for providing virtual encrypted disks for Android apps. does not require root or any special permissions at all the API is a drop-in replacement for the standard java.io.File API, so if you have ever worked with files in Java, you already know how to use IOCipher works easiest in an app that stores all files in IOCipher, but using standard java. [Read More]
Android  beta  encryption  iocipher  open source  privacy  psst  secure storage 

report on IOCipher beta dev sprint

 Posted on January 31, 2013  |  Hans-Christoph Steiner

We are just wrapping up an intensive dev sprint on IOCipher in order to get the first real beta release out, and it has been a wonderfully productive session on many levels! Before we started this, we had a proof-of-concept project that was crashy and ridiculously slow. We’re talking crashes every 100 or so transactions and 9 minutes to write 2 megs. Abel and I were plodding thru the bugs, trying to find the motivation to dive into the hard problems in the guts of some of the more arcane parts of the code. [Read More]
Android  encryption  iocipher  libsqlfs  open source  psst  sqlcipher 

IOCipher lives! encrypted virtual file system for Android

 Posted on May 17, 2012  |  Hans-Christoph Steiner

Nathan and I just got the first complete test of IOCipher working in the IOCipherServer/SpotSync app. We created a filesystem sqlite.db file, then mounted it and got all the files via HTTP. In the test suite, I have lots of operations all running fine and encrypting! The core idea here is a java.io API replacement that transparently writes to an encrypted store. So for the most part, just change your import statements from: [Read More]
Android  encryption  open source  prototype  psst  security 

Transparent encrypted virtual disks for Android (we call it IOCipher)

 Posted on April 3, 2012  |  Hans-Christoph Steiner

When using phones, laptops, computers, etc. it feels like a private experience, as if our screen was the same as a piece of paper, and when that paper is gone, then no one can see it anymore. Digital media works very differently. While the user interface portrays the deletion of files as very final, for someone with the right tools, it is actually not hard to recover deleted files. Also, digital information takes up so little space, we now regularly carry vast amounts of information in our pockets. [Read More]
Android  encryption  full disk encryption  fuse  open source  psst 

Call My Email

 Posted on March 22, 2012  |  mark

What if you could call me directly through my email? No exchanging of phone numbers or searching for handles on Skype. Just plain and simple email. Now what if we can make that phone call as secure as it is easy. That’s the goal of what we’re doing here at Open Secure Telephony Network (OSTN). The internet is already structured to be able to do this. That’s why I can have all of my emails point to one email box if I want to. [Read More]
open source  ostn  security  telephony  zrtp 

Adventures in Porting: GnuPG 2.1.x to Android!

 Posted on March 15, 2012  |  Hans-Christoph Steiner

PGP started with Phil Zimmerman’s Pretty Good Privacy, which is now turned into an open IETF standard known as OpenPGP. These days, the reference OpenPGP platform seems to be GnuPG: its used by Debian and all its derivatives in the OS itself for verifying packages and more. It is also at the core of all Debian development work, allowing the very diffuse body of Debian, Ubuntu, etc developers to communicate and share work effectively while maintaining a high level of security. [Read More]
Android  gnu privacy guard  gnupg  gpg  gpgme  java  jni  native  open source  openpgp  porting  preview  prototype 

Progress on Mobile Video Privacy Tools

 Posted on September 10, 2011  |  n8fr8

If you are a developer you may just want to skip all the prose below, and just jump over to Github to find our new FFMPEG on Android project{.vt-p} and build system. You can also check out our SSCVideoProto Project{.vt-p} to understand how we are using it to redact faces and other identifying areas of HD video right on the Android phone itself. For more context, read on… Last October at the Open Video Conference 2010, the idea of a camera application that could be designed to understand the needs and requirements of the human rights community was born. [Read More]
ffmpeg  obscuracam  open source  openvideo  ovc11  privacy  securesmartcam  witness 

Orbot Update: New Setup Wizard at Startup

 Posted on July 29, 2010  |  n8fr8

We’ve been working away at the 0.0.9 release of Orbot over the last few months, and have put a decent amount of effort into usability. Specifically, we hoped to better communicate to users what it means to run Tor on your Android phone. In addition, we wanted to clearly lay out how the various configuration options help to improve your mobile web anonymity and ability to circumvent web filters and tracking by your mobile service provider. [Read More]
Android  anonymity  open source  orbot  proxy  tor  usability  ux