Nadim Kobeissi ( ar, نديم قبيسي; born 28 September 1990) is a French-Lebanese computer science researcher specialized in applied cryptography. He is the author of

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 giv ...

, an open-source encrypted web chat client. Kobeissi is also known for speaking publicly against

Internet censorship Internet censorship is the legal control or suppression of what can be accessed, published, or viewed on the Internet. Censorship is most often applied to specific internet domains (such as Wikipedia.org) but exceptionally may extend to all Int ...

and

Internet surveillance Computer and network surveillance is the monitoring of computer activity and data stored locally on a computer or data being transferred over computer networks such as the Internet. This monitoring is often carried out covertly and may be comple ...

Early life and education

Kobeissi was born in

Beirut Beirut, french: Beyrouth is the capital and largest city of Lebanon. , Greater Beirut has a population of 2.5 million, which makes it the third-largest city in the Levant region. The city is situated on a peninsula at the midpoint o ...

, Lebanon. He studied at the

Lebanese American University The Lebanese American University (LAU) ( ar, الجامعة اللبنانية الأميركية) is a secular and private American university located in Lebanon. It is chartered by the board of regents of the University of the State of New Y ...

in Beirut from 2008 to 2009, and graduated with a degree in philosophy at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada in 2013. Kobeissi was a Ph.D. student in applied cryptography at

Inria The National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology (Inria) () is a French national research institution focusing on computer science and applied mathematics. It was created under the name ''Institut de recherche en informatiq ...

in Paris. from 2015 to 2018. In 2018 and 2019 he was adjunct professor of computer science at

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then- Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, th ...

's Paris campus teaching a course on computer security. In 2021 Kobeissi was naturalized French Citizen. Kobeissi is fluent in Arabic, French, and English and is based in Paris.

Research

Kobeissi is the primary author of

. The project was discontinued in 2019. In 2015, Kobeissi became active in researching formal verification for cryptographic protocols. In December 2018, he defended his Ph.D. thesis, ''"Formal Verification for Real-World Cryptographic Protocols and Implementations. (Vérification formelle des protocoles et des implementations cryptographiques)."''.

Activism

In 2010, Kobeissi was an early supporter of US army whistleblower

Chelsea Manning Chelsea Elizabeth Manning (born Bradley Edward Manning; December 17, 1987) is an American activist and whistleblower. She is a former United States Army soldier who was convicted by court-martial in July 2013 of violations of the Espionage A ...

. He organized a march through Montreal in December that year in support of

WikiLeaks WikiLeaks () is an international non-profit organisation that published news leaks and classified media provided by anonymous sources. Julian Assange, an Australian Internet activist, is generally described as its founder and director and ...

, ran a WikiLeaks mirror site, and defended WikiLeaks on various Canadian news publications. During 2011 and 2012, Kobeissi hosted CHOMP.FM, a radio program on Internet activism that ran weekly on Montreal's

CKUT-FM CKUT-FM is the official campus community radio station of McGill University. It can be heard at 90.3 FM in Montreal. CKUT's FM signal, broadcast from a tower on the top of Mount Royal, reaches as far as the Eastern Townships and upstate New Yo ...

radio station. The show included guests from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), security researcher

Bruce Schneier Bruce Schneier (; born January 15, 1963) is an American cryptographer, computer security professional, privacy specialist, and writer. Schneier is a Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and a Fellow at the Berkman Klein Cente ...

, and journalist

Glenn Greenwald Glenn Edward Greenwald (born March 6, 1967) is an American journalist, author and lawyer. In 2014, he cofounded ''The Intercept'', of which he was an editor until he resigned in October 2020. Greenwald subsequently started publishing on Substac ...

. In 2013, Kobeissi led an effort known as the Skype Open Letter which brought together more than forty organizations, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Reporters Without Borders, and the

Open Technology Institute New America, formerly the New America Foundation, is a think tank in the United States founded in 1999. It focuses on a range of public policy issues, including national security studies, technology, asset building, health, gender, energy, educa ...

, calling on

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washin ...

and

Skype Skype () is a proprietary telecommunications application operated by Skype Technologies, a division of Microsoft, best known for VoIP-based videotelephony, videoconferencing and voice calls. It also has instant messaging, file transfer, deb ...

to release transparency reports regarding Skype monitoring and surveillance. The effort was successful, and Microsoft released its first transparency report shortly after the letter was published.

Entrepreneurship

In 2017, Kobeissi founded Symbolic Software, which offers security audits for company infrastructure, software code, and cryptographic protocols. In January 2021, a tweet by Kobeissi about his plans to design a form of "decentralized social media" immediately sparked the interest of several investors and led to the creation of Capsule Social, Inc. a startup whose mission is to build a truly decentralized social media platform to foster free speech, making it more resilient to censorship and control.

References

External links

Capsule Social, Inc.

Symbolic Software

Personal website

Techcrunch article about Capsule Social
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kobeissi, Nadim 1990 births Living people Cryptographers Computer security specialists Concordia University alumni Lebanese expatriates in France Scientists from Beirut