MiniLock: a program to keep your private files private

Image courtesy of  Yuri Samoilov at Flickr.com

The creator of an encryption program that wasn’t successful released another one with a renewed concept: making encryption so easy that anyone can do it, in order to stay protected from the prying eyes that spy on digital communications.

Espionage, a century ago, could be as simple as setting up a copper wire on an official telephone line and start eavesdropping. Today, one hundred years later, that way of spying is something to laugh at, and it may even seem endearing. Current espionage systems are so incredibly sophisticated that few words actually manage to escape the network of technological eyes that are constantly watching the digital messages circulating on the planet: SMS, emails, social networks, phone calls, and so on.

The world’s public opinion is divided between those who justify tracking and those who believe that a compulsively observed population will result in the most barbaric totalitarianism imaginable. Hackers and tech-savvy experts, though, were the first to denounce the machinery that states and governments were setting up to delve into any private space. The best known cases are those related to Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, but there are many more.

This community is also trying, with a lot more courage, to avoid an ultra-controlled future. For years, hackers have been creating encryption technologies to shield messages and making them only accessible to the person who sends and receives them. Many of them called themselves “cypherpunks”. People like Assange spent a lot of time creating free encryption systems for people to express themselves freely on the Internet. The identity and contents of a message are inaccessible except for the sender and the recipient.

For years there have been services that have been trying to stay out of this global espionage network consisting of governments and businesses. As an example we can find web browsers (Tor, Chrome’s incognito mode or Firefox’s private browsing), mail services (Lavabit, Riseup), instant messaging clients (Telegram) or search engines (DuckDuckGo).

But outside of those environments, for the average user, encryption remains a bit of a mystery. Software engineers and similar experts, however, work harder to make it easier and lighten the weight of this unprecedented network of espionage. One of those hard-working people is security consultant Nadim Kobeissi, who created and released a browser plugin that is capable of encrypting and decrypting files in just a few seconds, and was featured in an article from Wired magazine.

The program is called MiniLock. It is free and open source -you can find its source code in GitHub-, and it was presented for the first time in New York’s Hope X hacker conference in July of 2014. Kobeissi hopes to develop software so simple that anyone can use it. “It’s super simple, approachable, and it’s almost impossible to be confused using it”, said Kobeissi to the aforementioned magazine.

Image courtesy of Christiaan Colen at Flickr.com

MiniLock first appeared as a beta version and, according to its creator, it began still in an experimental phase. The extension is capable of encrypting virtually anything, ranging from videos embedded on an e-mail message to photos stored on a USB drive. These encrypted documents can also be stored, safely, on services like Dropbox or Google Drive.

In this desire for simplicity, MiniLock requires no registration or a signup process. The only thing the user has to enter is an extremely secure password, which means that it must be comprised of a combination of at least 30 letters and numbers.

Kobeissi has been working for quite a while on encryption systems. The consultant is probably better known for his Cryptocat chat program. But, according to Wired, that project had security flaws. In a pessimistic view this could mean that the hacker community can view MiniLock with a skeptical eye. An optimistic outlook may focus on something different. Kobeissi himself says that he has learned a lot from Cryptocat and he’ll avoid the mistakes he made back then. One example is the fact that he chose not to release the program right away via Google’s store. Instead, he posted the code on GitHub in order to allow other coders and experts to assess it, check it and correct it beforehand.

Information leaks have turned into a trending occurrence, an especially significant one when it comes to fighting corruption. Certain systems, such as the open-sourced SecureDrop, have allowed citizens to present documents and all kinds of complaints to major news outlets, in a secure and anonymous way, to protect the identities of the whistleblowers.

The controversy that came after Snowden’s revelations about the NSA encouraged the creation of platforms such as Trsst, a microblogging site similar to Twitter, which describes itself as “encrypted, anonymized and decentralized”.

Encrypting information will probably end up being a common practice. And maybe, hopefully before long, it will turn into something as simple as creating a zip file today.

Related contentRead Don Burns’ “Threema, a messaging app that cares about your privacy”

Threema, a messaging app that cares about your privacy

Image courtesy of Dr. Motte at Flickr.com

Telegram is surely the app that we usually resort to in order to demonstrate how an app can offer a very high level of security and privacy to its users, with certain characteristics such as end-to-end encryption and secure chats that take to the next level the fact that we can feel safe when we take part in a conversation with sensitive information. The developers of Telegram have struck a chord with a need that came from millions of users after the events that took place with Edward Snowden and the NSA.

Now we have another application that follows this path and that presents itself as one of the most secure ones to stay out of reach from hackers, corporations and government agencies, and, once and for all, it can be used in a completely anonymous way.

The app is called Threema and we could say that it's the opposite to the ones that we use everyday -such as WhatsApp- in terms of security and privacy.

Security comes first

Telegram is a big bet, and so is Line with the implementation of end-to-end encryption. WhatsApp would later adopt this method, though a bit later than its competitors. If we want to jump to the next level, we’ll get to Threema. It's not a free app, something that some users may not like, but those who want to have access to certain privacy and security features will shortly find in it a great destination for completely anonymous conversations.

Threema is an app developed by a company in Switzerland that has been endorsed by the German government. The servers are located in Switzerland as well and we could say that it’s one of the countries that cares the most about users’ safety and privacy.


With that being said, these servers will only store the minimal amount of information, and the users’ devices will act as clients and servers. The Swiss servers will only act as intermediaries to transfer information from one device to the other. Said information, will be encrypted.

Anti-hacker encryption

Image courtesy of  Melina Sampaio Manfrinatti at Flickr.com

Without a doubt, announcing that it will be impossible for hackers to access your private information will be an attractive statement to them, but this is due to an encryption method based in the open-source library NACl (Networking and Cryptography library). This is why in order to impede copies of information or unauthorized backdoor accesses, the encryption keys are generated and stored securely in the devices of the users, as we mentioned before. 

Threema has stated that group subscriptions and contact lists are only managed from the user’s device. Once the messages have been delivered, they delete themselves so that the files that remain locally will stay, encrypted, within the smartphone or tablet.

The following are several of Threema’s features:

• Text messages and voice messages 
• Sending of all kinds of files: PDF, GIF, MP3, Doc, ZIP and so on.
• Sending images and video and the ability to share your location.
• Group chats in which new members can be deleted at any time.
• ID verification of contacts through personal QR codes.

It’s also worth noting that Threema doesn't require the use of a phone number or an email address. Each user receives a random ID from Threema to identify themselves.

You may not find many of your contacts with it, but it's only a matter of time. It also has a specific function in terms of privacy which differentiates it completely from other apps.

The company that created Threema is made out of -you guessed it- three employees. The startup managed in just 24 hours to double the size of their user base and the app got to the first place in the charts of paid apps in Germany.

Threema combines components of social networking with some of them coming from messaging apps and, on the other hand, apps aimed towards customization. Anonymity is definitely a key factor around which the app revolves.

The German government endorsed the usage of alternative apps for private communications. The app also allows you to find other users by syncing your contacts, but this step is completely optional. You can also share information such as your location on a map, all without leaving the app. If you want, you can exclude individual contacts from the sync process, it features an internal image viewer, a contact list that can be classified according to your needs, blocking of individual contacts, quick switching between different chat conversations, custom nicknames for unknown contacts and several other useful features that will help you keep your conversations away from eavesdroppers.

Even though it doesn't feature the option of voice calling, users can send voice messages. It's available for iOS and Android, and it’s a little less expensive if you have a Windows phone.

Related content

Read Don Burns' "The importance of cryptography in points of sale"