Tag Archive for 'Encryption'

This Message Will Self-Destruct

This Message Will Self-Destruct offers the ability to send an encrypted email-like message to another person either with or without a password.  As a reassurance that your message is secure, it’s never stored with TMWSD.  The optional password salts the encryption key for even more security.

Once you have entered your message and clicked on  SAVE THIS MESSAGE, you will be given a URL to pass on to the recipient.  When the intended recipient reads your message (with or without the password you may have given them) the encrypted message is deleted forever. If you lose the password your message is also lost!

Dropbox

Dropbox allows you to work on and synchronise documents from many computers. However, it does have a significant security weakness. Continue reading ‘Dropbox’

Secret Squirrel

Concealing one’s activities on the Web is something every Investigator should understand.  You should understand this for your own use and to understand how these techniques may deny you needed information.  Yet using these techniques may also target you as an undesirable in some circumstances.

The following are methods used to obscure Internet traffic and avoid IP blacklists  and content filters.

Continue reading ‘Secret Squirrel’

COMSEC

Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day; Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday. (Psa 91:6)

I don’t think they were talking about Communication Security (COMSEC) when they wrote that Psalm, but good COMSEC helps avoid terrors that come in the night.

Zfone for VOIP

Zfone  appears to be the lowest cost solution for robust VOIP encryption that you control.

Skype

Calls made over Skype are encrypted by 256-bit long Skype encryption keys are a length that at least in theory, would take a literal eternity to crack. But you don’t have control over the encryption, Skype does.

Oldstyle COMSEC

To avoid an electronic trail, hard copy letters that are distributed via snail mail in a circular rotation might work– these are known as circular letters.  Each letter is given a number, and each addenda that is added is given a letter. Subsequent letters can reference the content of earlier ones, for example, “as mentioned in Letter 2-A”, etc., etc..

This can be modified to include an emailed file that is encrypted and the message sending it digitally signed by each person.  Using nearly anonymous email accounts accessed through TOR would make this very secure.

VoIP Encryption

In 1991, Philip Zimmermann developed an encryption technology known as Pretty Good Privacy. Zimmermann, the CEO of PGP Corp., created ZRTP, a technology for encrypting Internet telephone calls. PGP Corp. has just released Zfone, which is ZRTP-enabled Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) software that prevents Internet telephone call wiretapping.

Forbes.com spoke with Zimmermann about why his company created Zfone which he offers to the public for free. The article is interesting because Zimmermann points-out the intelligence value of traffic analysis, which I mentioned in a previous article. Zfone makes it nearly impossible to eavesdrop on a conversation, but it does not prevent an intelligence service or police service from conducting traffic analysis.

VON Magazine also interviewed Zimmermann in its January 2007 edition about issues surrounding wiretapping and VoIP.