Blackphone - secure Android fork

Impetus

The Blackphone was announced today. It is a high security Android (fork of Andoird 4.4) that tracks apps and the information they exchange when they call back home to their developer. It has secure browsing via VPN, secure file transfer and storage, secure voice, video and text, together with remote wipe and protect. No Google play store, which is no surprise. Made by SGP Technologies, and its product website has a Swiss URL:

www.blackphone.ch

However there is no SGP technologies in the Swiss phonebook. The Swiss whois indicates that it is registered to an address in 1207 Geneva.

It is strange that this company’s website doesn’t include an Impressum disclosing where they are based.

Review in ars: http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/06/exclusive-a-review-of-the-blackphone-the-android-for-the-paranoid/ (3 pages)

Another post Snowden device - perhaps Merkel and her ministers might invest in this instead?

Trojan

First generation looks a bit rough but I can see this one improving rapidly as they learn more about putting a phone together, more software is developed, and they get real world user feedback.

Impetus

Trojan wrote: »

First generation looks a bit rough but I can see this one improving rapidly as they learn more about putting a phone together, more software is developed, and they get real world user feedback.

Factory production hasn't started yet - the test models supplied to journalists to review didn't have LTE for example. Reports suggest that they have had a lot of pre-orders from sight unseen buyers, so one suspects that there will be a "Blackphone 2" to follow shortly.

It would be useful if they had their own app store, to enable developers to sell particularly security related apps. How they would keep the handiwork of the 50,000 odd NSAbots in Ft Meade, MD from infiltration of the system is another question, and which I suspect is a non-trivial task.

They could have come up with a better name than "Blackphone", as it suggests something sinister. There is nothing sinister about keeping Android app developers from capturing and collecting your personal data and selling it etc.

Tow

Is this a rip-off of Boeing's Black Smartphone or are they one and the same?

http://www.boeing.com/boeing/defense-space/ic/black/index.page

howamidifferent

From the review above...

The flagship apps on the Blackphone are Silent Circle’s Silent Phone and Silent Text, a pair of encrypted communications tools that share a common directory service. Silent Circle comes with some serious crypto cred—the company’s president and cofounder is Phil Zimmermann, the creator of PGP.

howamidifferent

Tow wrote: »

Is this a rip-off of Boeing's Black Smartphone or are they one and the same?

http://www.boeing.com/boeing/defense-space/ic/black/index.page

Are privacy,security and "Assembled in the USA" even remotely compatable?

From Snowdens leaks don't we know that the US embed monitoring hardware in all switches and networking gear leaving the US for other countries? :rolleyes:

industrialhorse

howamidifferent wrote: »

Are privacy,security and "Assembled in the USA" even remotely compatable?

From Snowdens leaks don't we know that the US embed monitoring hardware in all switches and networking gear leaving the US for other countries? :rolleyes:

Maybe the assembly is going on in some hippy commune in the a*se end of Colorado?

howamidifferent

industrialhorse wrote: »

Maybe the assembly is going on in some hippy commune in the a*se end of Colorado?

Funded by Boeing? :pac:

Impetus

Tow wrote: »

Is this a rip-off of Boeing's Black Smartphone or are they one and the same?

http://www.boeing.com/boeing/defense-space/ic/black/index.page

They might have "ripped off" the word "black", and done some creative swiping with a few product ideas. One could think of a better brand name. The idea of an American secure phone (or any other software based device) is an oxymoron in my books.

While I am using Microsoft Windows to post this, I suspect there will be no shortage of replacement software/devices from organisations based in continental Europe or Asia in the not too distant future.

The US used to be the "land of the free" - now it is a police state, slowly expanding its grip elsewhere, like a frightening monster that kept growing, in a movie I saw when I was about five years old, back in the day. The more people that use high security features like encryption, the more it will be impossible for those who wish to conduct mass surveillance to get away with it. Of course one doesn't want bank robbers or whatever to benefit from the same technology. But the cost to society of a few extra bank robberies would be miniscule compared with nation states abusing personal privacy, journalism privacy, regulatory organisation privacy, political choice privacy etc. It would be back to the times of the Stazi when there was somebody on each street paid to observe and file reports on what individuals and doing, who their friends were, etc. Only now it is automated thanks to a bug in your pocket that follows you everywhere.

Impetus

In the EU every phone must come with a SAR certificate.

From a personal security and privacy perspective it would be helpful if mobile phone manufacturers provided a grid of information to answer privacy questions - along the lines of the table on page 3 of http://www.av-comparatives.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/avc_datasending_2014_en.pdf. Ditto for the mobile phone networks.

After all what have they got to hide about their product/service specification, unless they are engaged in some corrupt business / "regulatory" relationships? Or have offered certain governments "mass theft of information" services in return for an operators license?

Rucking_Fetard

Blackphone gets rooted in under 5 minutes at BlackHat security conference

Recondite49

I am wondering what advantages this offers over Cynaogen Mod or Replicant - I imagine it will be possible to put this on more devices?

Forgive my ignorance though, if all Blackphone does is to control Application permissions and force connections through a VPN, can't the same be achieved with a rooted Smart phone? My old Samsung Galaxy Ace had a firewall for root users which could actually disable system apps if needs be as well as control individual applications' access to the internet.

I don't mean to criticise, but am wondering what Blackphone brings to the table?

Rucking_Fetard

By cracking cellphone code, NSA has ability to decode private conversations

Recondite49

Rucking_Fetard wrote: »

By cracking cellphone code, NSA has ability to decode private conversations

Thanks for this RF - this is especially worrying for me as my phone often default's to Three's 2G service!