The Guardian Project team spends a lot of time thinking about users. (example or lighthearted comment about Guardians love of UI/UX) In our work we focus on easy-to-use applications for users in high-risk scenarios. Because of this we are very focused on security. In our current work with the FDroid community to make it a secure, streamlined, and verifiable app…
Category: Development
“If This, Then Panic!” Sample Code for Triggering Emergency Alerts
Earlier this year, we announced the PanicKit Library for Android and Ripple, our basic app for alerts any compatible app that you are in an emergency situation. Rather than build a solitary, enclosed “panic button” app that only can provide a specific set of functionality, we decided, as we often do, to build a framework, and encourage others to participate.…
How to Migrate Your Android App’s Signing Key
It is time to update to a stronger signing key for your Android app! The old default RSA 1024-bit key is weak and officially deprecated. What? The Android OS requires that every application installed be signed by a digital key. The purpose behind this signature is to identify the author of the application, allow this author and this author alone…
Hiding Apps in Plain Sight
Beyond just thinking about encryption of data over the wire, or at rest on your mobile device, we also consider physical access to your mobile device, as one of the possible things we need to defend against. Some of our apps, such as Courier, our secure news reader, include a Panic feature, enabling a user to quickly delete data or…
Turn Your Device Into an App Store
As we’ve touched upon in previous blog posts the Google Play model of application distribution has some disadvantages. Google does not make the Play store universally available, instead limiting availability to a subset of countries. Using the Play store to install apps necessitates both sharing personal information with Google and enabling Google to remotely remove apps from your device (colloquially…