Awesome Stuff Goes Dark: Dark Mail And Dark Wallet
from the sometimes-it's-good-to-be-in-the-dark dept
This week we’ve got two projects for our awesome stuff post that have to do with some of the topics we’ve been discussing lately: secure email and Bitcoin.
- Last week, we were the first to report that Ladar Levison was planning to release Lavabit’s code as open source (including dark mail capabilities Levison is working on with Silent Circle) and to put up a Kickstarter campaign. That campaign is now live. It’s worth pointing out that respected security guru Moxie Marlinspike wrote an interesting criticism of Lavabit, but also that Levison provided a detailed response.
It appears that many people are believers. In just a few days, the campaign managed to bring in over $75,000. That’s still short of the $196,608 being sought, but it seems fairly likely that he’ll get there. It’s interesting to see that one person has already agreed to give $10,000.
- Moving on from dark mail, we’ve got Dark Wallet, an interesting IndieGoGo project to create a simple and easy-to-use, but secure, Bitcoin wallet. The folks behind it are hoping to build a series of useful Bitcoin tools down the road.
That’s it for this week, we’ll be back next week with something a little lighter, I’m sure.
Filed Under: awesome stuff, bitcoin, dark mail, dark wallet, email
Companies: lavabit
Comments on “Awesome Stuff Goes Dark: Dark Mail And Dark Wallet”
Thanks for posting this
I just pledged for the FOSS Lavabit Kickstart.
Is Dark Wallet another Armory?
I use the Bitcoin-Qt at the moment.
Source: DarkWallet-UnSystem
Hmmm…DarkWallet is not another Armor is intended to become a platform.
The interesting part is the decentralized identity and distributed reputation systems.
Text Hash(SHA512).
4c899e0e8f1352bbd777480918d25b0859f740652382bf8938a877d587338b456e84a333b70eb6a4acef3b5a00acad67f3a8531d5078f69c8757d954d3b9b720
open sourcing email
Yes coding requires a bit of knowledge but even a novice can tell when someone has added a bit of extra code to a known code size. Easier to tell than if you have no idea what the underlying code is when you click on an icon. I salute the gentlemen.
This project is already a complete failure
Oh, it’s well-intentioned. But it’s a total failure already, as those behind it haven’t done anything to prevent end users’ systems from compromising it.
They won’t do that because it would GREATLY diminish the size of the potential user base. But that’s exactly what they need to do in order to have a fighting chance of success.
Here is what will happen — write it down, note the date, if you like.
It will be carefully designed. It will be (mostly) correctly implemented. It will subsequently (or perhaps, simultaneously) draw the attention of various intelligence agencies as well as the usual suspects: phishers, spammers, and so on. In short order, they will reprogram their botnets to exfiltrate data from it. It won’t be long after that until they have those same botnets generate synthetic traffic, and of course not long after that until they’re in a position to inject malware and conduct known-plaintext attacks against the crypto. Those who relied on this service will wake up one day to discover that they’re fairly well screwed.
I hope I’m completely wrong about all of that. I strongly suspect I’m not.
Poor naming
Dark mail? Why not just call it blackmail?