The future of IP telephony

[Strange]

You are right, impossible is a bit strong. There are systems that use stronger encryption. 

[StringJunky]

33 minutes ago, iNow said:

WhatsApp is encrypted, but not impossible to intercept. Just not as easy. Signal is another similar app. 

I think the weak points are at the ends i.e. the devices. The actual delivery is secure AFAIK. Signal is the big brother of the Whatsapp version.

Edited January 28, 2018 by StringJunky

[Moreno]

3 hours ago, Strange said:

I have never used it, but I gather WhatsApp is encrypted end-to-end which makes it impossible to intercept. There are several other communication apps that are similar. 

And if you are concerned about the authorities knowing that you have communicated with someone, even if they can’t tell what was said, then you can use something like Tor to anonymise.

What type of inscription is unbreakable at modern technology?

[StringJunky]

3 hours ago, Moreno said:

What type of inscription is unbreakable at modern technology?

AES-256 is the current standard for banks and the like.  All that means though is that link is very strong, you've still got to prevent entry into the devices.

Quote

Breaking a symmetric 256-bit key by brute force requires 2128 times more computational power than a 128-bit key. Fifty supercomputers that could check a billion billion (1018) AES keys per second (if such a device could ever be made) would, in theory, require about 3×1051 years to exhaust the 256-bit key space.

[Strange]

3 hours ago, StringJunky said:

All that means though is that link is very strong, you've still got to prevent entry into the devices.

True. If the eavesdroppers have access to your device, then it's "Game Over"!

6 hours ago, Moreno said:

What type of inscription is unbreakable at modern technology?

The only truly unbreakable encryption is a one time pad.

[StringJunky]

5 hours ago, Strange said:

The only truly unbreakable encryption is a one time pad.

Can you elaborate a bit how that works?

[Strange]

16 hours ago, StringJunky said:

Can you elaborate a bit how that works?

A one-time pad is an encryption key that is used by you and me, say, to encode  the message in some (eversible) way. For example, you take the first letter of the message and the first number or letter of the key and add them together. Then you do that for each letter in turn. The key point is that the one-time pad is longer than the message in fact, it is longer than all the messages you will ever send so you only use each number or letter in the one-time pad once.

You and a friend could decide to encode your messages using War and Peace. After you have sent about 500,000 words, you will need to switch to a new book as the key. As long as only the two of you know what the book is, then the code is unbreakable. Actually, if you use a real book, then the natural language patterns in the book will provide enough statistical regularity that could allow the code to be broken so, in practice, when one-time pads are used they are actually books of random numbers.

The risk then is that the enemy gets access to the one-time pad and then they can decode all your messages.

[StringJunky]

5 hours ago, Strange said:

A one-time pad is an encryption key that is used by you and me, say, to encode  the message in some (eversible) way. For example, you take the first letter of the message and the first number or letter of the key and add them together. Then you do that for each letter in turn. The key point is that the one-time pad is longer than the message in fact, it is longer than all the messages you will ever send so you only use each number or letter in the one-time pad once.

You and a friend could decide to encode your messages using War and Peace. After you have sent about 500,000 words, you will need to switch to a new book as the key. As long as only the two of you know what the book is, then the code is unbreakable. Actually, if you use a real book, then the natural language patterns in the book will provide enough statistical regularity that could allow the code to be broken so, in practice, when one-time pads are used they are actually books of random numbers.

The risk then is that the enemy gets access to the one-time pad and then they can decode all your messages.

Right. Cheers.

[swansont]

On 1/26/2018 at 9:25 AM, swansont said:

If you never had a cable, there's nothing to give up. You still seem to be centered on industrialized nations that have cable infrastructure, and that is by no means the whole picture. And even for industrialized nations, the landscape is changing. As I posted earlier, half of the US has no landline anymore. 

If you have a cell phone, and don't make international calls, of what use is Skype, et al.? What fraction of the population makes international calls?

 

I'll add to this: less than half of the world uses the internet (as of 2015)

 

[Moreno]

On ‎1‎/‎26‎/‎2018 at 8:57 AM, Strange said:

I have just cancelled my landline.

I don't know anything about WhatsApp but with Skype you can pay to make calls to landlines. Which makes sense: someone has to pay for the phone call. So, technically, WhatsApp could allow people to make (charged) calls to landlines but presumably they don't see it as relevant to their business model.

I think this problem is more relevant to standardization rather than technological revolution. The turn is on phone manufacturers (both stationary and mobile) side. All they need to do is just to manufacture all the stationary phones in the hybrid version - capable support both PTSN and VoIP equally well. Such phones have to be maintenance free, so people wouldn't need to download any updates or care about antivirus - all this have to be done at the server side. Such hybrid phones need to support Skype, whatsapp and variety of other Internet programs. Once everyone will have a hybrid phone PTSN can either die slowly or people may all abandon it in X day (like it already happened to analog TV in some countries). The same is about mobile phones. Mobile manufacturers need to preinstall all the phones to support Skype, whatsapp etc, equally well as a regular communication protocols. Then people would be able to pay for Internet only and speak for free. Voice traffic takes just insignificant amount of total Internet traffic.

Edited February 9, 2018 by Moreno