h a l f b a k e r yA few slices short of a loaf.
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secure phone
Secure Analog Telephone Communications using Digital Technology" | |
There have been many advances in voice
encryption for VOIP, but it seems like
landlines have been ignored, ever since
PGPfone, which is ancient at this point. It
seems to me it should be possible to
encrypt landline communications using
existing technology and strong ciphers
(eg. AES, RSA,
Twofish) between a very
small group of people. Granted, I have
little use for this, but it just seems like a
cool idea. Here's how I envision it:
1. The participants of the secure landline
conversation would first generate RSA
keypairs and distribute their public keys.
3. The phone jack would lead to a
modem, which would go into the
computer at a USB port. Another USB port
would connect to a handset.
2. SSH (or some other crypto software)
would be set up to decrypt data
coming from the speaker wire using your
private key and encrypt data coming
from
the mic using the public key of whoever
you're conversing with. Somehow the
speaker wire and mic wire would be
soldered to
the USB connection in such a way that
they
could be distinguished from each other,
so
full-duplex communications could be
acheived.
As you can see, my understanding of this
is really vague. Maybe USB wouldn't be
the
best connection technology. And,
doubtless, there would be many other
issues, notably in the software
architecture, to account for
authentication
and error correction, etc.
Here's one.
http://www.tccsecure.com/csd3600.htm
[Shz, Nov 10 2006]
CryptoPhone
http://www.cryptoph...s/CP-WIN/index.html
Windows client; uses landline, not VOIP [jutta, Nov 10 2006]
[link]
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//it seems like landlines have been ignored, ever since PGPfone, which is ancient at this point.// |
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Nope. There are many devices to do this, full-duplex, with keys even. I know of none that connect as described, though. |
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That's pretty cool. It's not quite what I
had in mind, though - my idea is not
so much a hardware appliance that
encrypts telephone communications -
although that is probably faster &
easier. |
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My idea is to have the computer do the
encrypting, so all one would need is a
way of hooking one's phone up to one's
computer, and some software that does
the encrypting & decrypting. The phone
hookups would be easy to find, and the
software would be open-source, using
already existing crypto software and
libraries. |
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It would certainly be less expensive that way. Similar configurations exist, but they are VOIP. |
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Good find, jutta. I thought they bundled a modified O/S, so requiring a dedicated machine, but that's only for their Smartphone implementation. A nice (non)feature: No key escrow! |
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[re: jutta]
They say other ports are on the
roadmap, too. Neato! |
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Isn't this just VOIP? Well, it doesn't have to use IP, eliminating some of the overhead, but it's still digital voice over a computer network. |
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//[Aq Bi] Isn't this just VOIP?// |
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No; VOIP, even dialup VOIP, is
eventually routed over the internet,
while this (the software thingy jutta
linked to, and the gist of my idea) is
__analog__ voice routed
over the __Plain Ol' Telephone Service__
network. It is only digitized while it is in
one's computer, being encrypted. |
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