http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/10/the-secure-smartphone-that-wont-get-you-beaten-with-rubber-hoses/
By Peter Bright
Ars Technica
Oct 15, 2014
Interest in secure communications is at an all time high, with many
concerned about spying by both governments and corporations. This concern
has stimulated developments such as the Blackphone, a custom-designed
handset running a forked version of Android that's built with security in
mind.
But the Blackphone has a problem. The mere fact of holding one in your
hand advertises to the world that you're using a Blackphone. That might
not be a big problem for people who can safely be assumed to have access
to sensitive information—politicians, security contractors, say—but if
you're a journalist investigating your own corrupt government or a
dissident fearful of arrest, the Blackphone is a really bad idea. Using
such a phone is advertising that you have sensitive material that you're
trying to keep secret and is an invitation to break out the rubber hoses.
That's what led a team of security researchers to develop DarkMatter,
unveiled today at the Hack In The Box security conference in Kuala Lumpur.
DarkMatter is a secure Android fork, but unlike Blackphone and its custom
hardware, DarkMatter is a secure Android that runs on regular Android
phones (including the Galaxy S4 and Nexus 5) and which, at first glance,
looks just like it's stock Android. The special sauce of DarkMatter is
secure encrypted storage that selected apps can transparently access. If
the firmware believes it's under attack, the secure storage will be
silently dismounted, and the phone will appear, to all intents and
purposes, to be a regular non-secure device.
The full details of DarkMatter still aren't nailed down, and it won't
reach the market until some time next year.
[...]
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