All Facebook will see is cyphertext-the mathematical gibberish computers generate to thwart spying eyes.Ĭhatting with Facebook friends who aren’t using Cryptocat is the same as using the standard Facebook interface-secure to the server, and then readable by Facebook. Only the participants in any given chat have the keys to decrypt and read their own chats. It’s called “end-to-end” encryption, and it doesn’t allow Facebook or any other server, including Cryptocat’s own, to see plain text messages. But Facebook itself can see, store, or even turn over all the messages their users send to each other.Īfter installing a browser plug-in for Cryptocat, the program connects to Facebook using the same SSL Facebook uses, and shows people their available Facebook friends, but the security feature Cryptocat ultimately offers is different. No one on the open internet can read Facebook chat messages without breaking the SSL encryption Facebook uses, denoted by “https” and a lock icon in the browser. On Facebook, chats are encrypted between users and Facebook’s servers. But tools like Cryptocat could be perhaps described more gently as "mass surveillance resistant.”
#Chat skins for cryptocat software
No one, including Kobeissi, would call Cryptocat “NSA proof.” If a powerful entity like the NSA is after you, no software is likely to save you. So why not take their Facebook friend list and use it to enable them to have encrypted chat with their friends?” “We already have a ton of users that use Facebook as a list of their contacts. Nadim Kobeissi, Cryptocat’s 23 year-old founder, started the project about two months ago, to give people already using lists of contacts in standard Facebook chats a way of adding their own layer of encryption.
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