An interesting post from Slashdot for a distributed encryption system to be developed from someone that has done similar work at Google. In light of the push for backdoors in all encryption and I think the admission they are in place by the US government recommending everyone use them in light of the Chinese telecom hacking, you can’t trust the systems being used now, e.g. Telegram, Signal… So this would be a system to keep an eye out for, or get involved in its development or possibly run a server.
WaywardGeek writes:
Recall that Apple was ordered to back-door Advanced Data Protection in the UK. We need to take action now to protect users.
I helped build Google’s Advanced Data Protection (Google Cloud Key VaultService) in 2018, and Google is way ahead of Apple in this area. I know exactly how to build it an can have it done in spare time in a few weeks, at least server side. The whole world would be able to use it for free, protecting backups, passwords, message history, and more, if we can get existing applications to talk to the new data protection service.
However, I need help. I’ve got the algorithms and server-side covered. This would be a distributed trust based system, so I need folks willing to run the protection service. I’ll run mine on a Raspberry PI. Areas where I need help include:
* Running protection servers. This is a T-of-N scheme, where users will need say 9 of 15 nodes to be available to recover their backups.
* Android client app, and preferably tight integration with the platform as an alternate backup service.
* Same with iOS
* Authentication. Users should register, and login before they can use any of their limited guesses to their phone unlock secret.
The scheme splits a secret among N protection servers, and when it is time to recover the secret, which is basically an encryption key, they must be able to get key shares from T of the original N servers. This uses a distributed oblivious pseudo random function algorithm, which is very simple.
In plain English, it provides nation-state resistance to secret back doors, and eliminates secret mass surveillance, at least when it comes to data backed up to the cloud. iOS and Android systems don’t currently do that. The UK and similarly confused governments will need to negotiate with operators in multiple countries to get access to any given users’s keys. There are cases where rational folks would agree to hand over that data, and I hope we can end the encryption wars and develop sane policies that protect user data while offering a compromise where lives can be saved.
So, nothing too serious 🙂
Are you up for this challenge? Are you ready to plunge into this with me?