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Slashdot: Help Wanted To Build Open Source Advanced Data Protection For Everyone

Help Wanted To Build Open Source Advanced Data Protection For Everyone
Published on June 01, 2025 at 12:32AM
Apple's end-to-end iCloud encryption product ("Advanced Data Protection") was famously removed in the U.K. after a government order demanded backdoors for accessing user data. So now a Google software engineer wants to build an open source version of Advanced Data Protection for everyone. "We need to take action now to protect users..." they write (as long-time Slashdot reader WaywardGeek). "The whole world would be able to use it for free, protecting backups, passwords, message history, and more, if we can get existing applications to talk to the new data protection service." "I helped build Google's Advanced Data Protection (Google Cloud Key VaultService) in 2018, and Google is way ahead of Apple in this area. I know exactly how to build it and can have it done in spare time in a few weeks, at least server-side... This would be a distributed trust based system, so I need folks willing to run the protection service. I'll run mine on a Raspberry PI... The scheme splits a secret among N protection servers, and when it is time to recover the secret, which is basically an encryption key, they must be able to get key shares from T of the original N servers. This uses a distributed oblivious pseudo random function algorithm, which is very simple. In plain English, it provides nation-state resistance to secret back doors, and eliminates secret mass surveillance, at least when it comes to data backed up to the cloud... The UK and similarly confused governments will need to negotiate with operators in multiple countries to get access to any given users's keys. There are cases where rational folks would agree to hand over that data, and I hope we can end the encryption wars and develop sane policies that protect user data while offering a compromise where lives can be saved. "I've got the algorithms and server-side covered," according to their original submission. "However, I need help." Specifically... Running protection servers. "This is a T-of-N scheme, where users will need say 9 of 15 nodes to be available to recover their backups."Android client app. "And preferably tight integration with the platform as an alternate backup service."An iOS client app. (With the same tight integration with the platform as an alternate backup service.)Authentication. "Users should register and login before they can use any of their limited guesses to their phone-unlock secret." "Are you up for this challenge? Are you ready to plunge into this with me?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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