He’s also planning to purchase some of the US$25-$35 Raspberry Pi mini-computers under development by the Raspberry Pi Foundation. There already is an add-on application for Google’s Chrome browser, and Kobeissi expects to release native applications for iOS and Android later this year. Kobeissi has plans for quite a few Cryptocat improvements. By using a “.onion” URL for Cryptocat, the Cryptocat server will not know the users’ true IP addresses, Kobeissi said. A user creates a chat session, picks a nickname and then types a random string of characters in order to generate the 256-bit AES encryption keys for the public key cryptography system it uses.Ĭryptocat’s code is open source, and Kobeissi has published details on how its encryption works in order to get feedback from other cryptology specialists.Īs an added security measure, Cryptocat is compatible with TOR (The Onion Router), a worldwide network that make web surfing more anonymous by randomly routing traffic through its servers. First, one of its versions is web-based, so no application has to be downloaded. The beauty of Cryptocat is its simplicity. OTR must be downloaded, installed and configured, and both parties having a conversation must have it enabled in order for the messages to be encrypted. There are proven encryption technologies for instant messaging, such as PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) and OTR (Off The Record), an add-on encryption program for IM applications such as Pidgin and Adium.īut PGP can be “difficult to use for people who aren’t computer geeks,” Kobeissi said. Messages are encrypted when transmitted, but those conversations are decrypted on the servers running those services, potentially allowing interlopers to record them. Many of those applications implement SSL (Secure Sockets Layer), an encryption protocol that underpins e-commerce transactions.
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