Silent Circle (software)

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Silent Circle, LLC

logo
legal form Limited Liability Company
founding October 2011 ( 2011-10 )
Seat Columbia , Maryland , United States
management Gregg Smith - CEO
Branch software
Website https://www.silentcircle.com/

Silent Circle is an encrypted communications company based in Columbia , Maryland, USA . The product range includes solutions for secure conversations on mobile and stationary devices on various platforms. The business model is based on a subscription-based service that the company launched on October 16, 2012. The encryption technologies used are all free software / open source and audited . The remaining parts of the software products Silent Phone and Silent Text are open source on GitHub , but under a proprietary software license.

history

In November 2011 Mike Janke turned to Phil Zimmermann with the idea for a new kind of private, secure version of Skype. Zimmermann was impressed by the project and contacted Jon Callas , the co-founder of PGP Corp. and Vincent Moscaritolo. Janke, in turn, brought security expert Vic Hyder to complete the founding team. The company was founded in Nevis , but relocated its headquarters to Le Grand-Saconnex near Geneva in Switzerland in 2014 , as this is a country with "stronger data protection laws in terms of customer data."

On August 9th, Silent Circle announced on its website that it would discontinue the e-mail service Silent Mail because "the sparrows whistle from the roofs" ("see the writing on the wall") that e-mail cannot be operated sufficiently securely . The looming threat of government coercive measures and the precedent of shutting down Lavabit made this evident.

In January 2015, a serious vulnerability in Silent Text became public that allowed an attacker to take control of a Blackphone remotely . The attacker only had to know the Silent Circle ID or the telephone number. Blackphone and Silent Circle closed the vulnerability shortly after the vulnerability was published.

A controversy arose in March 2015 when security specialist and hacker Khalil Sehnaoui pointed out that Silent Circle had removed the warrant canary from their website.

In January 2017, Gregg Smith was named Managing Director, along with a realignment with large corporate clients and government agencies. At the same time, Tony Cole, FireEye’s vice president and global government CTO , was appointed to the board of directors. Smith moved the company headquarters from Switzerland back to the USA shortly after he took office.

resonance

In November 2014, Silent Phone and Silent Text each received the highest ratings in the Electronic Frontier Foundation's ranking for secure communication , together with “ChatSecure + Orbot”, Cryptocat , TextSecure , and “ Signal / RedPhone”. The evaluations included the encryption of communication on the transport route, the fact that the providers did not have access to the keys ( end-to-end encryption ), mechanisms to check the identity of the communication partner, and the confidentiality of older messages themselves if a current message is cracked ( forward secrecy ), the auditability of the source code ( open source ), for the complete documentation of the security concept and for independent verification of security.

Products

The product range focuses on secure communication from mobile devices, in particular encrypted telephony, short messages and video communication.

Current

In May 2018 the following will be marketed:

  • Silent Phone: Encrypted voice telephony, video telephony and short messages on mobile devices. Currently available for iOS, Android, and the Silent OS produced by the company on the Blackphone. Silent Phone works worldwide via WLAN, EDGE, 3G or 4G.
  • GoSilent : A personal firewall with built-in VPN and cloud monitoring. The product results from the takeover of the start-up Kesala
  • Blackphone : A secure communication smartphone that Silent Circle designed, built and sold by SGP Technologies, a joint venture between Silent Circle and Geeksphone.

Discontinued

The following products have been discontinued and are no longer sold and / or supported:

  • Silent Text: Discontinued on September 28, 2015.
    A program and service for encrypted text messages and secure file transfer with the option of permanently deleting messages after delivery ("burn notice"). The functionalities were carried over to Silent Phone .
  • Silent Mail: Discontinued August 9, 2013 .
    An encrypted, private e-mail service with its own transport network, compatible with most e-mail user software.

Business model

The company is privately funded and operates a subscription service .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ https://www.silentcircle.com/contact-sales/
  2. ^ Ungerleider, Neal: Phil Zimmermann's Silent Circle Builds A Secure, Seductive Fortress Around Your Smartphone . Fast Company. October 5, 2012. Retrieved May 23, 2015.
  3. ↑ Silent Circle . Retrieved May 23, 2015.
  4. ↑ Julie Bort: An Internet Hall Of Famer And Some Navy SEALs Want To Make Your iPhone Safer . In: Business Insider, Inc. . Retrieved March 12, 2013.
  5. ↑ Dean Takahashi: Crypto wiz Phil Zimmermann leads charge to make phone calls really private . Venturebeat. August 8, 2014. Retrieved January 26, 2015.
  6. ↑ Moneyhouse: Silent Circle SA (excerpt from the commercial register)
  7. ↑ Steve Ranger: Defending the last missing pixels: Phil Zimmermann speaks out on encryption, privacy, and avoiding a surveillance state . In: TechRepublic , June 23, 2015. 
  8. ↑ Hayley Tsukayama: Lavabit, Silent Circle shut down e-mail: What alternatives are left? . In: Washington Post , August 9, 2013. Retrieved August 10, 2013. 
  9. ↑ Mark Dowd: BlackPwn: BlackPhone SilentText Type Confusion Vulnerability . Azimuth Security. January 27, 2015. Accessed December 1, 2015.
  10. ↑ Michael Mimoso: Memory Corruption Bug Patched in Blackphone Silent Text App . Kaspersky Lab. January 28, 2015. Accessed December 1, 2015.
  11. ^ Silent Circle: We haven't been served a single demand for data . In: ZDNet . CBS Interactive. March 8, 2015. Accessed November 3, 2015.
  12. ^ Silent Circle Appoints Gregg Smith as Chief Executive Officer .
  13. ↑ https://www.cyberscoop.com/back-in-america-with-a-black-eye-silent-circle-rebuilds-focused-on-software/
  14. ↑ Secure Messaging Scorecard. Which apps and tools actually keep your messages safe? . Electronic Frontier Foundation. 4th November 2014.
  15. ^ Paul Ridden: PGP creator aims to keep digital communications strictly confidential with Silent Circle . Gizmag . Retrieved March 12, 2013.
  16. ↑ Silent Circle Acquires Kesala to Strengthen Data Protection for Global Business Operations .
  17. ↑ What is Silent Phone? . Silent Circle. September 17, 2015. Retrieved October 4, 2015.