Guardian Project is a global collective of software developers, designers, advocates, activists and trainers who develop

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

mobile security software and operating system enhancements. They also create customized mobile devices to help individuals communicate more freely and protect themselves from intrusion and monitoring. The effort specifically focuses on users who live or work in high-risk situations and who often face constant surveillance and intrusion attempts into their mobile devices and communication streams.

History

Guardian Project was founded by Nathan Freitas in 2009 in

Brooklyn, NY Brooklyn () is a Boroughs of New York City, borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York. Kings County is the most populous Administrative divisions of New York (state)#County, county i ...

. Since it was founded, Guardian Project has developed more than a dozen mobile applications for Android and

iOS iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also includes ...

with over two million downloads and hundreds of thousands of active users. It has also partnered with prominent open source software projects, activists groups,

NGOs A non-governmental organization (NGO) or non-governmental organisation (see spelling differences) is an organization that generally is formed independent from government. They are typically nonprofit entities, and many of them are active in h ...

, commercial partners and news organizations to support their mobile security software capabilities. In November 2014, "ChatSecure + Orbot" received a top score on the

Electronic Frontier Foundation The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is an international non-profit digital rights group based in San Francisco, California. The foundation was formed on 10 July 1990 by John Gilmore, John Perry Barlow and Mitch Kapor to promote Internet civ ...

's secure messaging scorecard, along with

Cryptocat Cryptocat is a discontinued open-source desktop application intended to allow encrypted online chatting available for Windows, OS X, and Linux. It uses end-to-end encryption to secure all communications to other Cryptocat users. Users are given ...

TextSecure TextSecure was an encrypted messaging application for Android that was developed from 2010 to 2015. It was a predecessor to Signal and the first application to use the Signal Protocol, which has since been implemented into WhatsApp and other app ...

, "

Signal In signal processing, a signal is a function that conveys information about a phenomenon. Any quantity that can vary over space or time can be used as a signal to share messages between observers. The ''IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing'' ...

RedPhone Open Whisper Systems (abbreviated OWS) was a software development group that was founded by Moxie Marlinspike in 2013. The group picked up the open source development of TextSecure and RedPhone, and was later responsible for starting the develo ...

", Silent Phone, and Silent Text. "

Jitsi Jitsi is a collection of free and open-source multiplatform voice (VoIP), video conferencing and instant messaging applications for the web platform, Windows, Linux, macOS, iOS and Android. The Jitsi project began with the Jitsi Desktop (previous ...

+ Ostel" scored 6 out of 7 points on the

's secure messaging scorecard. They lost a point because there has not been a recent independent code audit. In March 2016, Guardian Project announced a partnership with

F-Droid F-Droid is an app store and software repository for Android, serving a similar function to the Google Play store. The main repository, hosted by the project, contains only free and open source apps. Applications can be browsed, downloaded and ...

and

CopperheadOS CopperheadOS is a mobile operating system for smartphones, based on the Android mobile platform. It adds privacy and security features to the official releases of the Android Open Source Project by Google. CopperheadOS is developed by Copperhead ...

with the goal of creating "a solution that can be verifiably trusted from the operating system, through the network and network services, all the way up to the app stores and apps themselves".

Funding

Guardian Project has received funding from

Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. I ...

UC Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant univ ...

with the

MacArthur Foundation The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is a private foundation that makes grants and impact investments to support non-profit organizations in approximately 50 countries around the world. It has an endowment of $7.0 billion and p ...

Avaaz Avaaz is a U.S.-based nonprofit organization launched in January 2007 that promotes global activism on issues such as climate change, human rights, animal rights, corruption, poverty, and conflict. In 2012, ''The Guardian'' referred to Avaaz as ...

Internews Internews Network, now Internews, is a 501(c)(3) organization incorporated in California, formed in 1982. It was founded by David M. Hoffman, Kim Spencer, and Evelyn Messinger. The president and CEO is Jeanne Bourgault. Internews Europe is an ...

Open Technology Fund The Open Technology Fund (OTF) is an American nonprofit corporation that aims to support global Internet freedom technologies. Its mission is to "support open technologies and communities that increase free expression, circumvent censorship, and ...

WITNESS In law, a witness is someone who has knowledge about a matter, whether they have sensed it or are testifying on another witnesses' behalf. In law a witness is someone who, either voluntarily or under compulsion, provides testimonial evidence, e ...

, the

Knight Foundation The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, also known as the Knight Foundation, is an American non-profit foundation that provides grants for journalism, communities, and the arts. The organization was founded as the Knight Memorial Education ...

Benetech Benetech is a nonprofit social enterprise organization that empowers communities with software for social good. Previous projects include the Route 66 Literacy Project, the Miradi environmental project management software, Martus (human rights abu ...

, ISC Project and Free Press Unlimited. Through work on partner projects like

the Tor Project The Tor Project, Inc. is a Seattle-based 501(c)(3) research-education nonprofit organization founded by computer scientists Roger Dingledine, Nick Mathewson and five others. The Tor Project is primarily responsible for maintaining software for ...

, Commotion mesh and StoryMaker, the Project has received indirect funding both from the

US State Department The United States Department of State (DOS), or State Department, is an executive department of the U.S. federal government responsible for the country's foreign policy and relations. Equivalent to the ministry of foreign affairs of other nat ...

(through the

Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor The Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor Affairs (DRL) is a bureau within the United States Department of State. The bureau is under the purview of the Under Secretary of State for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights. DRL's res ...

Internet Freedom program) and from the

Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs The Ministry of Foreign Affairs ( nl, link=no, Ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken; BZ) is the Netherlands' ministry responsible for foreign relations, foreign policy, international development, international trade, diaspora and matters dealing wi ...

(through

HIVOS Hivos ( nl, Humanistisch Instituut voor Ontwikkelingssamenwerking, Humanist Institute for Development Cooperation) is an international cooperation organization, with its global office in The Hague, The Netherlands. Hivos provides support to civil ...

Projects

Active

Orbot Orbot is a free software Proxy server project to provide anonymity on the Internet for users of the Android operating system. It acts as an instance of the Tor network on such devices and allows traffic routing from a device's web browser, em ...

: A Tor client for Android. Tor uses

Onion Routing Onion routing is a technique for anonymous communication over a computer network. In an onion network, messages are encapsulated in layers of encryption, analogous to layers of an onion. The encrypted data is transmitted through a series of ne ...

to provide access to network services that may be blocked, censored or monitored, while also protecting the identity of the user requesting those resources. Often Orbot is installed with orWall, an app which takes the lead on the

firewall Firewall may refer to: * Firewall (computing), a technological barrier designed to prevent unauthorized or unwanted communications between computer networks or hosts * Firewall (construction), a barrier inside a building, designed to limit the spre ...

and then add the required

iptables iptables is a user-space utility program that allows a system administrator to configure the IP packet filter rules of the Linux kernel firewall, implemented as different Netfilter modules. The filters are organized in different tables, which ...

rules for

traffic shaping Traffic shaping is a bandwidth management technique used on computer networks which delays some or all datagrams to bring them into compliance with a desired ''traffic profile''. Traffic shaping is used to optimize or guarantee performance, impro ...

in order to allow Orbot traffic, and force the selected applications to be redirected to the Orbot TransPort. Instead of Orbot, AFWall+, available on

and

Google Play Google Play, also known as the Google Play Store and formerly the Android Market, is a digital distribution service operated and developed by Google. It serves as the official app store for certified devices running on the Android operating sys ...

app repository, is an alternative choice recommended for re-routing outbound traffic back through the local Tor port, even with iptables rules, and with a

virtual private network A virtual private network (VPN) extends a private network across a public network and enables users to send and receive data across shared or public networks as if their computing devices were directly connected to the private network. The be ...

OpenVPN OpenVPN is a virtual private network (VPN) system that implements techniques to create secure point-to-point or site-to-site connections in routed or bridged configurations and remote access facilities. It implements both client and server appl ...

. Finally, NetCipher SDK is the app developed by Guardian Project for users interested in enabling theirs apps working directly with Orbot (and thus with Orfox Tor browser). *

ChatSecure ChatSecure is a messaging application for iOS which allows OTR and OMEMO encryption for the XMPP protocol. ChatSecure is free and open source software available under the GPL-3.0-or-later license. ChatSecure has been used by international ind ...

: An instant messaging application integrated with the Off-the-Record encrypted chat protocol. Formerly called Gibberbot, the app is built on Google's open-source Talk app and modified to support the Jabber

XMPP Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP, originally named Jabber) is an open communication protocol designed for instant messaging (IM), presence information, and contact list maintenance. Based on XML (Extensible Markup Language), it ...

protocol. * ObscuraCam: A secure camera app that can obscure, encrypt or destroy pixels within an image. This project is in partnership with

, a human rights video advocacy and training organization. * Haven –

free Free may refer to: Concept * Freedom, having the ability to do something, without having to obey anyone/anything * Freethought, a position that beliefs should be formed only on the basis of logic, reason, and empiricism * Emancipate, to procure ...

and

Android security application designed to monitor activity happening around a device using its built-in sensors, and to alert the device owner of such activity. Co-developed with

Edward Snowden Edward Joseph Snowden (born June 21, 1983) is an American and naturalized Russian former computer intelligence consultant who leaked highly classified information from the National Security Agency (NSA) in 2013, when he was an employee and su ...

under the auspices of the

Freedom of the Press Foundation Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) is a non-profit organization founded in 2012 to fund and support free speech and freedom of the press. The organization originally managed crowd-funding campaigns for independent journalistic organizations, ...

Discontinued

* Orfox: A mobile counterpart of the

Tor Browser Tor, short for The Onion Router, is free and open-source software for enabling anonymous communication. It directs Internet traffic through a free, worldwide, volunteer overlay network, consisting of more than seven thousand relays, to con ...

. Guardian Project announced the stable alpha of Orfox on 30 June 2015. Orfox is built from '' Fennec'' (

Firefox for Android Firefox for Android is a web browser developed by Mozilla for Android smartphones and tablet computers. As with its desktop version, it uses the Gecko layout engine, and supports features such as synchronization with Firefox Sync, blocking w ...

) code and the Tor Browser code repository, and is given security hardening patches by the Tor Browser development team. Some of the Orfox build work is based on the Fennec;

project. In Orfox, the project removed the WebRTC component, Chromecast connectivity, app permissions to access the camera, microphone, contacts (address book), location data (GPS et al.), and NFC. Orfox was to supersede the Orweb browser project, and has in turn been superseded by the Tor Browser for Android. * Orweb: A privacy enhanced web browser that supports proxies. When used with Orbot, Orweb protects against network analysis, blocks cookies, keeps no local browsing history, and disables

Flash Flash, flashes, or FLASH may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Fictional aliases * Flash (DC Comics character), several DC Comics superheroes with super speed: ** Flash (Barry Allen) ** Flash (Jay Garrick) ** Wally West, the first Kid F ...

to keep the user safe. *Ostel: A tool for having

end-to-end encrypted End-to-end encryption (E2EE) is a system of communication where only the communicating users can read the messages. In principle, it prevents potential eavesdroppers – including telecom providers, Internet providers, malicious actors, and eve ...

VoIP Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also called IP telephony, is a method and group of technologies for the delivery of voice communications and multimedia sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. The terms Internet ...

calls. This was a public testbed of the Open Secure Telephony Network (OSTN) project, with the goal of promoting the use of free, open protocols, standards and software, to power end-to-end secure voice communications on mobile devices, as well as with desktop computers. This was discontinued in 2017.

Distribution

Guardian Project offers downloads of its apps from

Amazon Appstore Amazon Appstore is an app store for Android-compatible platforms operated by Amazon.com Services, LLC, a subsidiary of Amazon. The store is primarily used as the storefront for Amazon's Android-based Fire OS. including Amazon Fire tablets, an ...

Aptoide Aptoide is an online marketplace for mobile applications which runs on the Android operating system. In Aptoide, unlike the Android-default Play Store, there is not a unique and centralized store; instead, each user manages their own store. The s ...

, directly from their website, and through an

-compatible repository. Direct downloads are signed and can be verified with the developer's key.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Guardian Project (software), The Mobile software Secure communication Android (operating system) software Cryptographic software Free software projects Free and open-source Android software Internet privacy software