Meet The Blackphone And Boeing Black Secure Phones

Meet The Blackphone And Boeing Black Secure Phones

The race to create smarter smartphones and integrating them deeper into our lives has given birth to a market that is hungry for data about our lives, our habits, our passwords — summed up in one word — our identity.

People, services and business that we deal with everyday and even those that we’ve never heard of, are suddenly very interested in knowing as much as they can about us.

Not only that, the technologies around our smart devices are themselves vulnerable. They always have been — as PCs grew in popularity, malfeasance grew on the parallel. As cars became more advanced, their technology too, drew more adept thieves. Banks, websites — everything has an undergrowth of mala fide intent.

Around phones, initially the vulnerabilities related to usage, where a hacker or identify thief would listen into your conversation, use your phone as listening device or clone your device thereby allowing them to make calls using your connection.

With time, as we’ve begun using our mobile devices for everything in our lives — from making our grocery list, daily schedules, managing our contacts to storing banking details on our phones, these phones (and tablets) have become the motherlode of personal information that’s attracting attention.

Keeping abreast with our change in behaviour, manufacturers have also evolved, implementing security features on the phones to secure our data — Apple has introduced “Find my iPhone” for tracking and disabling iPhones and iPads, if stolen or misplaced; a wallet to store passwords securely, encryption features and now, on their iPhone 5S a fingerprint scanner.

Android, being the OS used by the majority of global mobile users is more vulnerable. The leaders at Android too have seen to the inclusion of a plethora of security features in their OS. These are further augmented by the phone brands themselves including additional security features in their handhelds — like Samsung Galaxy S5 having included a fingerprint scanner and onboard tracking facilities.

But most of these attempts (barring encryption) are barriers for the physical loss of device(s). The ongoing protection of data on a in-possession device is a weak link on most devices.

Thus, come the next breed of mobile products — those that differentiate themselves from the regular smartphone herd by enhancing their onboard security capabilities.

Two such devices caught our eyes recently — the Blackphone and the newly introduced Boeing Black.

Let us explore what they bring to the game.

Blackphone, a phone released by Geeksphone (a smartphone startup) and Silent Circle (a secure communications apps company), promotes users privacy and data security as its USP.

We’d written about the Blackphone a few months ago. You should read this article so you’re upto speed.

In case you’re lazy, here’s a quick run-up. The Blackphone uses a variant of Android OS, which the creators call PrivateOS. While this allows the owner to have a regular Android experience while also allowing them them to control their data usage in greater detail than ever before seen on the phone; they will have full control on their calls, contacts, web browsing and any third party app they download, thereby giving them the power to manipulate permissions for every feature and app.

In addition to this, the creators provide 5 GB of encrypted cloud space thanks to their partnership with SpiderOak.
SpiderOak has a “Zero Knowledge” policy; so when you log onto the cloud, you will have to enter your password, which will be encrypted and stored only for the period your are accessing the cloud. In addition to this they have restricted the number of employees who have access to the servers.

Cloud space on the SpiderOak server can be bought by anyone for a cost, which is included for the Blackphone users out of the box.

Another interesting addition is the Dissconnect.me; allowing the user to have a secure browsing experience, protecting him from third party tracking and also encrypting the data they share with any websites. The phone comes packed with decent specs; 2 GHz quad-core processor, 2 GB RAM and a 4.7 inch IPS screen.

The phone is currently on preorder status, and should ship out to public by mid-2014, with a price tag a little upwards of USD 600.

Another phone that has come into our radar recently is from the aircraft manufacturer Boeing.

Seeing the opportunity created by BlackBerry’s downward spiral, Boeing created a secure phone called Boeing Black. It is aimed at government officials and other people allied to the government, who handle sensitive information and documents.

According to the Bruce Olcott, Counsel to Boeing, said that the intricate details of the phone would not be made available for the consumption of the general public.
Boeing in their letter to the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) have requested that the phone specs should not be shared with the public even if applied for under the FOIA (Freedom of Information Act).

Documentations on the FCC website gives us an indication that it will be a dual SIM phone enabling it to switch between government and commercial networks and will work on GSM, LTE and WCDMA networks.

Boeing Black integrates seamlessly into customer mobile device management systems and virtual private networks.

Boeing has worked on the hardware and software to make the device secure; if any person tampers with the device, it will self destruct and wipe out all the software and accompanying user data on the device.

The device specs we’ve been able to thread together are:

• Display: 4.3 inch qHD (540 x 960 pixels)
• Dual 1.2 GHz ARM Cortex-A9 CPUs
• Dual SIM Supported Bands:
• LTE 700/1700/2100
• WCDMA 850/1900/2100
• GSM 850/900/1800/1900
• Bluetooth v2.1 + EDR-enabled connectivity
• Security Features: Embedded FIPS 140–2 Key Storage, Hardware Inhibits, Trusted Modules, and Configurable OS Security Policies
• Storage: On-board + micro SD
• Expansion Ports: micro USB, PDMI, Modular 24-Pin Connector
• Battery: Lithium-Ion 1590 mAh

The governments and commercial establishments collecting our user data have fueled this need for privacy and security, so we should be seeing more devices with robust security features.

It sure feels good to have more control over our privacy!

Originally published at Chip-Monks.