It seems that every month, a new secure messaging network arrives on the scene. Signal, Wire, Ricochet, as well as encryption in commercial tools such as iMessage and WhatsApp. Which one should you use? How do they work? And do or don’t they keep the NSA out of your messages? We will discuss the cryptographic building blocks that are used in these systems and compare the types of attacks they can and can’t withstand, including attacks on both content and metadata.
Nikita Borisov (@nikitab) is an Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research focuses on privacy and anonymity of online communications, as well as protecting the Internet from censorship. He co-invented the Off-the-Record Messaging and the DP5 protocol for private presence; his research has also influenced the design of the Tor network and the 802.11 security suite.
Sze Chuen Tan (@sctan) is an undergraduate student with the ECE department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research interests are polarized along the axes of web/network protocol security and computer architecture.