NSA Publishes Blueprint For Top Secret Android Phone 172
mask.of.sanity writes "The National Security Agency has designed a super-secure Android phone from commercial parts, and released the blueprints(Pdf) to the public. The doubly-encrypted phone, dubbed Fishbowl, was designed to be secure enough to handle top secret phone calls yet be as easy to use and cheap to build as commercial handsets. One hundred US government staff are using the phones under a pilot which is part of a wider project to redesign communication platforms used in classified conversations."
I want one. (Score:4, Interesting)
That'd be the coolest geeky thing to have. Although I suspect it doesn't do you a lot of good unless both sides of the conversation is using them.
transparent case and dip switches... (Score:5, Interesting)
All I've really wanted for christmas for the last 10 years is a phone easily disassemblable, with a transparent case, and user facing dip switches for the mic, the antennas, the battery, and these days, the power line going to the camera. Or alternately for the camera, a physical piece of plastic that slides to expose/cover the camera. Also the dip switches should be placed in such a way that it is reasonably convincing to technical users that they are in fact breaking the relevant physical traces/wires.
Maybe in 10 more years...
fishbowl !=blowfish (Score:5, Interesting)
re: "The doubly-encrypted phone, dubbed Fishbowl"
A strange combination of clever and ironic.
Fishbowl is an anagram of Blowfish, though I dunno if they use that cipher.
However to most folks, a fishbowl is something in clear view, under close observation.
Quirky.
Re:Double Encryption??? (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, I remember reading somewhere that consecutive encryption of a file (or a data stream) provides no additional protection against brute force attacks. The brute force needed to decrypt the end result is virtually the same, whether you encrypt once or twice. Something about a "meet in the middle [google.com]" attack.
Not sure if this is true in all cases because TripleDES is a common encryption technique.
I (obviously) don't understand all that I read about this stuff.
Re:I want one. (Score:5, Interesting)
If you're implying a back door, the overriding problem as far as I can see is that if you have a secret double encrypted phone with an option, no matter how secret, for someone else to listen in, as a secret organization you wouldn't dare use the phone. Because somehow, by hook or by crook, by bribery, blackmail or corruption from the richest countries and individuals of the world, that back door *will* be made available to foreign powers. It's inevitable.
And so, the NSA will have created a phone that the NSA itself could not use.
If it had been intended as a honey pot, then bravo. Otherwise, no.
They are smarter than that (Score:5, Interesting)
MS knows that the government controls patents and that national security is a grounds that the government can take a patent away and make it public domain.
Interestingly enough the NSA has special status when it comes to patents. They can file secret patents that remain classified until someone tries to patent the same thing. At such time their patent is revealed and is valid from that date of revelation.
NSA can seize patents for their own and gag the in (Score:4, Interesting)