Encryption for your IM chats

Have you ever worried that someone may be snooping on your instant messaging chats? If so, this program can guarantee your security – or at least try.

Even if a program claims to offer a secure connection, do you trust it? Is the source code available? Win Crypto Chat uses complex algorithms – specifically the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) algorithm. The developers guarantee however that the program does not use SSL libraries nor does it require you to manually generate a key & install it. The program is completely open source so if you have any programming knowledge, you can inspect the code for integrity. The problem however is that for those with little programming knowledge, this is not the easiest program to use. Both parties having a conversation have to run the program but there is so much clicking involved that by the time it’s setup, it hardly seems worth it unless it is a highly confidential and long term chat you are planning. It even involves port configuration on your router and you won’t know it’s completed successfully until you get the “Handshaking Completed” message.

If you conduct regular confidential chats, then this may be worth your while but for most people, it will prove more hassle than it’s worth until the setup process is simplified.

Win Crypto Chat is a program that allows 2 parties to chat to each other over a direct TCP/IP connection with ridiculously high levels of encryption which is all done in the background automatically – no central server or key management hassle required. download it here (includes Delphi source).

There’s a screen shot here showing an imaginary conversation between Avi and Randy.Note – the Java and Windows versions are *not* compatible with each other, i.e. you can’t connect to the Java version with the Windows version or vice-versa.