Cryptotech Solutions

In today's show, I interview James Donaldson, CEO and co-founder of Copperhead, a team of information security researchers, forensic analysts, and software developers who produce a hardened, source-available version of the Android operating system – appropriately named CopperheadOS.   The vulnerabilities of the Android operating system have been known for years, but up to this point, Google has had little incentive to fix them because:  1) most customers don’t seem to care about digital privacy and security; and 2) many of the fixes would impact Google’s business model of gathering lucrative data and providing targeted ads to its customers.   There have been a handful of companies that have sprung up to address the niche market concerned with mobile device security; the most notable of which has been Silent Circle, maker of the Black Phone. But none of these companies have yet to achieve clear commercial success or produced a device that seems likely to be adopted on a large scale.   James Donaldson and Danie

Hey Gang,   Sorry I’ve been away for so long, but spent the summer moving half-way across the country…literally.  If you’re in the Washington, DC area and you’re interested privacy or cryptocurrencies (like Bitcoin, Dash, or Monero), then contact me at joel@cryptotech.solutions or on Twitter @CrypTecSolution because I’d love to hangout with like-minded people. If you don’t live in DC but you’re interested in these topics and have a question you’d like answered, please feel free to contact me then as well. Today’s guest is Maggie McNeill – author, activist, and sex-worker. I interviewed Maggie all the way back on April 14th about sex worker privacy. Unfortunately, we ran into a slew of technical difficulties. The video chat program that I typically use to record episodes wouldn’t work on Maggie’s computer; so we switched to a different video chat program, but I wasn’t really setup properly to record on that one, and…bottom line… the video was unusable. I just want to apologize to Maggie. She took the time and

In today's show, I interview CEO/founder Todd Weaver about his computer company Purism and how they were fixing Vault 7 exploits before it was cool.   As anyone watching this show probably already knows, Vault 7 is an archive of documents released by WiliLeaks that prove the CIA recently lost control of a suite of hacking tools, including malware, viruses, trojans, and un-patched “zero day” exploits, which allow an attacker to subvert most common operating systems and take control of the target’s device.    Unfortunately, many of the vulnerabilities “exposed” in Vault 7 have been known to the privacy and security community for a number of years, but device and software manufactures have not addressed these exploits because:  1) up to this point, most customers don’t seem to care about digital privacy and security; and 2) fixing many of them would reduce the manufacturing company’s own ability to gather lucrative data on its customers.   Thankfully not all companies think this way – Enter Purism.  For the last

In today's episode I wanted to cover a blog post I wrote back on Jan 31st titled "Burner Phones Go Black Market in Poland."   The blog post was inspired by an article on Lodzpost.com, and you can find a link to the original article in today's show notes page.   So back at the beginning of this year Poland put a new law into effect requiring retailers there in Poland to record and report the identity of every customers buying "pre-paid" Sim cards, or "Burner Phones" if you want to call them by their more sensational name.  So according to this new law, every customer has to present a government issued ID, and the store has to record their name and national identification number.   I've got a problem with this for a number of reasons, but before I get into that, let's remind people what a SIM card is.  A SIM card is the little, removable chip that allows your phone to talk to your cellular carrier's network. It holds unique information such as your telephone number, but also your personal security keys and netw