[guardian-dev] Secure/push messages in CyanogenMod

[Abel Luck]

https://www.facebook.com/CyanogenMod/posts/10153047439985425


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*Secure/push messages in CyanogenMod*

We've been focusing on data security lately; Cyanogen got the ball
rolling with Privacy Guard. And obviously, recent events have made
privacy concerns a global discussion.

The Privacy Guard contribution is the philosophy I like to to see in
these types of data security implementations: seamless protection of the
user data. If it's a pain to use, or if it breaks third party apps, it's
going to be a negative experience, and we're doing it wrong.

One of the interesting developments of the past couple weeks is that
iMessage, is not snoopable by a third party, not even Apple (or so they
would have you believe ;).

Regardless of whether that is true; I love the design philosophy of
iMessage: it works transparently, and encrypts the user's message
between iOS users and fails over to SMS as needed. Frictionless.

I'd thrown a poll out there, to see what sort of cohesiveness
CyanogenMod users have. Surprisingly high. Many CyanogenMod text a lot
with other CyanogenMod users.
https://www.evernote.com/shard/s63/sh/94c9d731-6540-430e-b401-c212f14428d7/fae4c3c7a114a957547a2d77c19e3323

Anyways, TL;DR. I've built out a secure/push based messaging plugin for
CyanogenMod. Messages between two CyanogenMod will be encrypted end to
end and sent over GCM. It's built into the framework; so it works
transparently, even with third party apps. (This is actually one of the
cooler points IMO, and I do a lot of testing with GoSMS, etc)

It's basically PGP (encryption + authenticity) for text messages, built
into the system.

There are two minor changes to the telephony and framework to support this:

Add Middleware hooks to IccSmsInterfaceManagerProxy. This allows a sent
SMS message to be intercepted and rewritten or sent over another transport.
http://review.cyanogenmod.org/44464

Add other various framework support bits (new permissions). Grant system
apps priority in case of ordered broadcast priority tie.
http://review.cyanogenmod.org/44545

Here's the source for the app/plugin, which is still under heavy
development.
https://github.com/koush/PushSms

At this point, I'm looking to get some feedback, discussion, thoughts,
etc on this project. Not ready for active testing yet.