Hardware Encrypted COMSEC Bundle by Purism
Todd Weaver
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Latest posts by Todd Weaver (see all)
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The long sought after secure communication of end-to-end hardware encrypted (HWE) chats is now available. Purism is proud to bring this innovation to the market in our Hardware Encrypted COMSEC Bundle.
The Liberty Phone (or Librem 5 phone), running PureOS, has always had an encrypted hardware card slot, and these OpenPGP smartcards generate their own secret keys that are unable to be extracted off of them, and they handle the encryption and decryption on the card itself.
The strongest possible security is a secure device (the Liberty Phone or Librem 5 phone) that uses an inserted hardware token (the OpenPGP smartcard) and is able to chat with a second secure device (a second Liberty Phone or Librem 5 phone) that uses a second inserted hardware token (a second OpenPGP smartcard). This setup allows for two people to communicate securely no matter the connection in between, it also allows for groups to communicate if that group has the same setup (multiple people with a phone+card in a shared chat room). This eliminates any possible decryption by unauthorized people. It is the strongest possible communication available today.
As a user-flow example, Person A on Phone A with Card A desires to chat with Person B on Phone B with Card B, and visa-versa. When both parties have a Liberty Phone (or Librem 5 phone), with the bundled OpenPGP smartcard in it; Person A simply types a message to Person B, and it is detected that hardware encryption is supported, so the message is encrypted on the OpenPGP smartcard for Person B and then the encrypted message is delivered (no service nor entity can decrypt it) and Person B receives the encrypted message, whereby it detects it is encrypted and uses their OpenPGP smartcard to decrypt the message on the card!. If you remove the card, all messages are encrypted and unreadable.
Creating the long sought after hardware encrypted (HWE) chat is extremely exciting, and if you desire to test this out yourself and deploy it wider, alpha setup steps can be found here, and the hardware needed to test can be purchased in this bundle of two phones, two cards, and the upcoming key exchange service from Purism that will be bundled with AweSIM. We will be expanding the capabilities and offering so feedback is welcome!
Creating the strongest hardware encrypted messaging is possible because of the forethought by Purism to include the smartcard reader in the Liberty Phone and Librem 5 phone so the device has built-in the ability to hardware based encrypted messaging where the secret key cannot be extracted.
Purism Products and Availability Chart
| Model | Status | Lead Time | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | Librem Key (Made in USA) | In Stock ($59+) | 10 business days | |
 | Librem 5 | In Stock ($699+) 3GB/32GB | 10 business days | |
| Librem 5 COMSEC Bundle | In Stock ($1299+) Qty 2; 3GB/32GB | 10 business days | |
| Liberty Phone (Made in USA Electronics) | Backorder ($1,999+) 4GB/128GB | Estimated fulfillment February | |
| Librem 5 + SIMple (3 GB Data) | In Stock ($99/mo) | 10 business days | |
| Librem 5 + SIMple Plus (5 GB Data) | In Stock ($129/mo) | 10 business days | |
| Librem 5 + AweSIM (Unlimited Data) | In Stock ($169/mo) | 10 business days | |
 | Librem 11 | In Stock ($999+) 8GB/1TB | 10 business days | |
 | Librem 14 | Backorder ($1,370+) | Estimated fulfillment December | |
 | Librem Mini | Backorder ($799+) | 10 business days | |
 | Librem Server | In Stock ($2,999+) | 45 business days |
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