Lil’ Debi: Easy Installer for Debian on Android
Posted on June 18, 2011
| n8fr8
Have an Android phone and want an easy Debian chroot running it?
Alpha test our new app, Lil’ Debi. It builds up a whole Debian chroot on your phone entirely using debootstrap. You choose the release, mirror, and size of the disk image, and away it goes. It could take up to an hour, then its done. Then it has a simple chroot manager that mounts and unmounts things, and starts/stops sshd if you have it installed.
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Announcing: SQLCipher for Android, Developer Preview r1
Posted on May 9, 2011
| Derek
After some major breakthroughs during last week’s development sprint, we’re extremely excited to announce SQLCipher for Android, Developer Preview r1. SQLCipher is an SQLite extension that provides transparent 256-bit AES encryption of database files. To date, it has been open-sourced, sponsored and maintained by Zetetic LLC, and we are glad to be able to extend their efforts to a new mobile platform. In the mobile space, SQLCipher has enjoyed widespread use in Apple’s iOS, as well as Nokia / QT for quite some time.
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Our Foolish Hackday!
Posted on April 6, 2011
| n8fr8
We had a great group of people show up at our April 1st “Don’t Be Fooled” Hackday here at the OpenMobileLab in New York. There were users, there were devs, and all sorts of other people in between. We tracked some of the brainstormed ideas on an open etherpad at: http://piratepad.net/bQPFn6FOhN (text of this pasted in below).
The main outputs of the hacking were LilDebi, an updated Debian installer for Android, the beginnings of a Bitcoin digital currency client, and another called UpOn App, which uses the accelerometer and white noise generators in the device to stop your cellphone from spying on you.
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April 26: “Advancing the New Machine” at UC Berkeley
Posted on March 22, 2011
| n8fr8
I, along with a number of others from the Guardian Project core dev team, will be at the UC Berkeley’s Human Rights Center “Advancing the New Machine” conference at the end of April. I am on a panel regarding security in the context of human rights. We will also be presenting the Secure Smart Cam project with our partners at Witness. (https://guardianproject.info/apps/securecam/).
You can learn more about the event here:
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Guardian Project: General Update March 2011
Posted on March 21, 2011
| n8fr8
We have recently updated our general presentation on the project, and thought we would share it with you here. Please post any comments, questions or feedback right here, and we will get back to you shortly.
You can find this presentation on Google Docs, where you can also find it in downloadable, offline formats.
Photos from our January Hackday
Posted on March 10, 2011
| n8fr8
Back in January, we held a very excellent hackday at Eyebeam in New York. We rooted a NookColor, made encrypted calls over SIP, and generally had a full day of talking about the state of mobile security and privacy. Thanks to everyone who attended, and many thanks to _hc and Eyebeam for hosting!
View the full Flickr photo set.
Addressing a “Privacy Challenge” with Guardian
Posted on March 2, 2011
| n8fr8
Organized by the ACLU, Tor Project, and PrivacyByDesign.ca, the “Develop for Privacy Challenge” is an interesting new software development challenge that was announced last month. Developers (teams or individuals) have until May 31st to come up with apps which address this goal:
Develop apps for smartphones or other mobile devices that educate users about mobile privacy and give them the ability to claim or demand greater control of their own personal information.
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SECURED: HTC Wildfires get Guardian
Posted on March 1, 2011
| Derek
As we’ve posted in the past, one of the services we provide at The Guardian Project is customizing off-the-shelf Android phones to be generally more secure, privacy minded and updated with a powerful suite of trusted apps. We’ve gotten our mitts on a number of devices over the last few months in this regard, including: myTouch 4G, Motorola Milestone (GSM Droid), HTC Desire GSM, TMobile G2, Samsung Galaxy S, Nook Color, and Viewsonic 10″ GTablet.
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A note on funding and our mention in Wired
Posted on February 23, 2011
| n8fr8
A message from Nathan Freitas, lead developer on Guardian, who has a life long bad habit of being misquoted or selectively quoted, a phenomenon he must now blame on himself, and not the reporters who interview him.
Some of you might have seen a story on Wired.com on which I am quoted, regarding the US State Department’s “Internet Freedom” agenda. In particular, I was asked to comment on the entrepreneurial angle they are taking.
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Interviewed CHOMP.FM 007 Podcast
Posted on February 19, 2011
| n8fr8
CHOMP.FM is a weekly broadcast on information freedom, internet privacy and cyberculture.
We were excited to be interviewed and including in the latest episode, CHOMP.FM 007. Many thanks to Nadim Kobeissi for featuring us in his super-interesting and relevant show.
You can listen to and download the mp3 directly.
Stickers!
Posted on February 17, 2011
| n8fr8
If you see us in person, make sure to ask for one. Otherwise, if you really, really want some, we can mail them to you. Just fill out our “contact” form with your address, and we’ll do our best to pop a few in this thing called an envelope and they should get there in a week(!).
Create an encrypted file system on Android with LUKS
Posted on February 2, 2011
| Derek
LUKS is the standard for Linux hard disk encryption. By providing a standard on-disk-format, it not only facilitates compatibility among distributions, but also provides secure management of multiple user passwords.
Building off the work from other great sources, the Guardian Project hack team decided to take a crack at porting LUKS to Android recently, with the goal of creating a proof of concept build process that can be easily adapted to future projects.
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Proxy Settings Add-on for Firefox Mobile
Posted on November 8, 2010
| n8fr8
The latest beta of Firefox 4 on Android is proving to be very usable, stable and an increasingly viable alternative to the built-in webkit browser. However, it is unfortunately lacking the ability to manually configure proxy settings through any sort of standard user interface. This is a common problem for Android, which also lacks the ability to set browser or system wide proxy settings. This has caused real issues for us with getting Orbot (aka “Tor on Android”) to work for un-rooted Android devices, because for routing through Tor to work, you must be able to set the HTTP or SOCKS proxy settings.
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Open Video Conference: Panel and Hackday
Posted on September 30, 2010
| n8fr8
Nathan Freitas will be on a panel at the 2nd annual Open Video Conference in New York this Friday and Saturday. He will be on the panel entitled “Cameras Everywhere” led by our partners at Witness, on Saturday at 3pm.
Summary: Cameras Everywhere: Human Rights and Web Video – (2:45 PM – 3:30 PM)
Description: Once upon a time, video cameras were rare. Now they are ubiquitous—as are the opportunities to share, use, and re-use video.
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Orbot Release 1.0 in the Android Market!
Posted on September 23, 2010
| Derek
It’s here! We’d like to officially announce the release of Orbot to the Android Market. After going beta back in March, we’ve seriously re-doubled our efforts for this release. By releasing Orbot to the Android Market, we suspect that our user base will eventually evolve towards the more ‘every day’ Android user – so our goal has been to create an experience that is simple yet informative, straightforward yet powerful. As a step towards that goal, we’ve spent some time creating a new setup wizard at Orbot start-up that walks you through the basics of what Orbot does and does not do.
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Calling all Guardians – Alpha Testers Needed!
Posted on July 13, 2010
| Derek
Recently here at the Guardian Project we’ve been brainstorming & designing a new tool that we think will be core to enabling truly protected mobile communications . We think it will a big step in improving the user-friendliness of making your communications secure, anonymous and private , but we need your help to make it great.
While it may give some of us a certain satisfaction to manually cobble together a suite of secure applications that suites our needs, this is by no means a long-term, wider-market solution.
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How To: Lockdown Your Mobile E-Mail
Posted on July 9, 2010
| Derek
Update 2015-04-27: _We now recommend OpenKeychain over APG, the app described in this blog post. The set up is drastically easier, so you probably don’t even need this HOWTO anymore. Start by downloading K-9 and OpenKeychain, then go into OpenKeychain and start the config there._
Over the past few years it’s become increasingly popular to sound the call that ‘email is dead{#y8a0}.’ And while many complementary forms of synchronous and asynchronous communication – from IM to social networking – have evolved since email first came on the scene, it’s hard to see email suddenly disappearing from its role as the most important way organizations communicate.
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aPad / iRobot / Moons e7001 Teardown
Posted on June 5, 2010
| n8fr8
This is the aPad or iRobot Android 7″ tablet device from www.hiapad.com. I decided to tear mine apart, as the unit I received has a battery issue, and I hoped to see if I could find a bad solder point. In addition, I was curious to see just how hackable or extensible the hardware was. In the end, I was mostly surprised by how much of the thing is put together with tape.
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Tor on a Tablet
Posted on May 25, 2010
| n8fr8
We recently acquired a Moons e-7001 “iRobot” tablet which runs Android 1.5. This device is also known as the “aPad”. It is a very basic iPad-clone, though honestly, it can’t really compare with the iPad in terms of quality of screen, build or general use. However, it does only cost $185, supports USB host mode, has a built-in camera, and it is running Android, an actual open-source operating system! It should also be pointed out that you can also now get the Archos 7 Android tablet, which is basically the same thing as this, from Amazon for $199.
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Orbot goes Beta
Posted on March 4, 2010
| n8fr8
As announced on the Tor Blog, an important development:
The Tor Project has been working very closely with Nathan Freitas and The Guardian Project to create an Android release. This is an early beta release and is not yet suitable for high security needs. The Android web browser is not protected by Torbutton and we have not yet developed an anonymous browser on the Android platform. Please be cautious with this release, it’s probably pretty fragile and it’s certainly not ready for serious use.
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