Blackphone BP1 Now Available

https://store.blackphone.ch/#

by jonbaer • 12 years ago

34 34 12 years ago

store.blackphone.ch

BorisMelnik• 12 years ago

people have been trying to get this for a while within my circle. definitely would love to play with one of these.

stevengg• 12 years ago

Have they released the source code yet?

Donwangugi• 12 years ago

This. It does not mention anywhere on their site that PrivatOS is OS.

avmich• 12 years ago

I'd also expect a very detailed hardware specifications - open-hardware level of details. Hardware simulators level of details. After all they talk about transparency - so both hardware and software should be up for the scrutiny.

dublinben• 12 years ago

both hardware and software should be up for the scrutiny

Except they won't ever be made available, since this company is full of crap. They're selling snake-oil, and shouldn't be trusted.

dobbsbob3• 12 years ago

I read in an interview you can ask to see the source if you sign plenty of NDAs and are a large prospective customer. Cryptophone GSMK operates the same

tdicola2• 12 years ago

I saw Jon Callas talk about the Blackphone at ToorCamp over the weekend and it looked really nice. One interesting factoid he mentioned is that the Blackphone went from initial conversation with manufacturer to actual shipping product in about _6 months_ which is insanely impressive for a well polished smartphone like this.

darksim905• 12 years ago

This isn't as big of a deal as it seems considering the testing & troubleshooting they went through with existing phones to see what works & what doesn't work. The hardware & shell of the phone is probably an off the shelf, off-brand phone design that nobody decided to use with minor customizations.

tdicola2• 12 years ago

From what he said it helped that they partnered with folks who had built hardware like this before. However they still had to do a ton of work in the software to customize the OS, build applications, partner with services, etc.

mahrain• 12 years ago

So we can be pretty certain that just visiting the Blackphone website has tagged you for Xkeyscore...

wahsd• 12 years ago

Pretty sure everyone here already is.

lallysingh2• 12 years ago

If you're worried about that, the blackphone website can host (via https) assets for ads, and put ads up on a few ad networks. Soon opening a connection to the blackphone site won't mean much.

Ephemeral DH for PFS, of course.

javajosh• 12 years ago

The first rule of Blackphone is: you do not talk about Blackphone!

(Actually I hope you do talk about blackphone because it's a worthy political product, and probably even a worthy product product.)

StavrosK2• 12 years ago

I have one, it's actually surprisingly good. I'd like to somehow get Google Apps on it (which, I know, defeats the purpose), but it's a very snappy phone, and I was really surprised by how light it is.

kndkvndslkgn• 12 years ago

That's some nice proprietary software you've got there.

It would be a shame if someone were to place a backdoor in it...

If you want true freedom and security, run Replicant. http://redmine.replicant.us/projects/replicant/wiki

rsync3• 12 years ago

Wake me when there is an open baseband that cannot be arbitrarily controlled by the carrier (and possibly has up to DMA access to your phone).

There is no secure phone until then.

revelation• 12 years ago

This. This phone is a joke. I appreciate the effort in trying to patch up that raging security disaster we call Android, but the real problem in any phone is the propietary baseband running on some RTOS with little in the way of process isolation (or security conscious programming, for that) connected to a high bandwidth, always on wireless communication interface speaking complex protocols designed by a committee with an endpoint run by companies that have been happily complying with mass-scale surveillance, mere packets away from direct access to the microphone and GPS chip, possibly a DMA directly into the application processor.

Oh, and that neat little micro SIM you put into it? It runs fucking Java and has carrier push support for new "applications" builtin, in the meantime it stores and generates the crypto keys used by the baseband.

This is the state of mobile security. Unless you are running osmocomBB on a crusty old Motorola brick with a logger between the phone and SIM to check for anomalous activity, don't touch it with a 3m pole.

StavrosK2• 12 years ago

It seems to me like you're saying "mobile phones can never be secured, security is all-or-nothing, and any attempt to secure mobile phones is futile". Is that accurate?

Because it seems to me that, sometimes, not leaving your doors and windows wide open, even though "they can always be broken into", is a good idea.

rsync3• 12 years ago

And unfortunately, just about every one of the osmocombb capable phones are euro frequency only, so even this route is not available to those in the us...

devcpp• 12 years ago

Let's face it: besides its high price and average specs, Blackphone is a normal phone with a proprietary AOSP-based ROM. That's it. No hardware mic/wireless switch whatsoever, no open hardware, no open baseband, not even open software! This is appallingly bad, and if they make bank, it means very bad things for all of us.

lallysingh2• 12 years ago

The OpenMoko phones (including the (hopefully) upcoming Neo900) run on osmocombb compatible baseband processors.

mindslight2• 12 years ago

An independent processor with a well-defined communication interface to a proprietary baseband (and ability to kill its power) would suffice. The easiest way to achieve this is probably a small low power "laptop" running GNU/Linux (or similarly free system) coupled with a MiFi hotspot (ideally modded to have a hard switch on its battery).

You can't get out of your location being trivially tracked by your carrier until you can pay for network access with anonymous bearer tokens, or at least significantly supplement with free wifi networks or friends' MiFis.

MichaelGG3• 12 years ago

It seems like this should be something "easy" to do right inside the phone, right? Why should the baseband processor have any uncontrolled access to the Android OS running on it? It should just expose voice and data channels, and whatever other little bits are required to interface.

zmanian• 12 years ago

The primary value of the Blackphone is that is comes with several hundred dollars of security services.

1. SilentCircle's encrypted messaging and VOIP solution + licenses for close collaborators.

2. Disconnect.Me's VPN

3. Spideroaks encrypted cloud storage

4. Kashmir's wifi finger printing services.

Everything is licensed for 2 years.

The primary market Silent Circle is going after at the moment is journalists, NGO workers, private military contractors etc who need smart phones at an organizational level but want enhanced resistance to surveillance.

MichaelGG3• 12 years ago

1. Eh, OK, you're probably better off using zRTP directly with your contacts. Silent Circle doesn't seem to actually say how your calls are any more secure. In a recent thread, they say they hand them off to a VoIP carrier and consider that "encrypted to the PSTN". IIRC part of Silent Circle's play is that they think the government cannot compel them to do "bad" things, so they're telling us to trust them on that basis.

2. One of a ton of services that cost like $3-4 or so a month and will probably fall. And sure, it prevents the local WiFi from running sslstrip at the cost of putting all your traffic at an easy-to-monitor place (the VPN provider).

3. A closed source program running access to all your data doesn't sound particularly impressive. But sure, it's better than using Dropbox.

4. Kismet Wifi manager is $2.99 on Google Play.

It might be better than nothing, but the product sounds seriously over-hyped, and some of their claims seem like outright lies or at best misleading/useless.

I also don't get, if such a combo of services was so valuable, why someone just doesn't sell it separately.

JshWright3• 12 years ago

Silent Circle does use ZRTP (the 'Z' in ZRTP is 'Zimmermann', who is one of Silent Circle's cofounders).

You don't need to trust anyone. There are (admittedly slightly out dated) buildable sources for the Android clients on GitHub. The whole point of ZRTP is that the server can be considered untrusted.

krsunny• 12 years ago

This phone has an 8 mega pixel camera. At what point do you think manufacturers will stop increasing pixel resolution? 50? 100? It has to top off somewhere otherwise people will need a second hard drive just to store phone pictures.

Blackphone BP1 Now Available

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