There are governors, rulers and leaders that systematically loot countries and nations. People get sick of their rules and revolution happens. Surrealistic sculptures that once were praised are now banned. Condemned. Within time people will realize what happened to their beloved country. That’s a routine process for thousands of years.

Does it take so much time for people to know what happened to them?

Of course.

Things have changed. With emerge of WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden it all became much easier for people to deepen their sight on breaking news.

Snowden evolution was a reaction to the worldwide-spying NSA which was and still is gathering enormous amount of data from literally every location in the world. Consequently, it perked everyone’s ears and highlighted the forgotten privacy.

Four years ago, a teenage, John Brook, initiated the work on coding a program that efficiently encrypts IMs using Tor hidden networks to mask the route of communication. This self-taught programmer started this project long before Snowden and public awareness of NSA’s bulk booking of Metadata. So all of a sudden, Brook found himself capable of solving the problem that countries like Germany rushed to fix this hole. The concept of the program, dubbed as Ricochet, is based on TorChat which had a similar pattern in transmitting messages throughout hidden Tor services. Alas, Torchat was vastly abandoned by users and developers. Based on TorChat spirit, Brook heavily redesigned and recoded the program in his spare time. Surprise!

In our days, normally encrypted emails and IMs would safe-guard content of communications but Metadata would allow NSA to map the relationships between sender and receiver. Also, spy agencies can track the communicants by unmasking their IPs and the fluctuate traffic in between. Ricochet seems to blow these problems away. Unlike other IM services that distribute messages through central servers which could be vulnerable to breaches, each Ricochet client works as a self-sufficient Tor service, providing a 16 character ID for authentication that then establishes a secure channel for users to communicate even without installing Tor. All the process is done with just a single click.

Communication between Ricochet users follows a certain process that takes anonymity to extreme levels. First, their clients approach Tor network to arrange a specific rendezvous point. Anonymously, the client first connects via three hops to a Tor relay that, of course, doesn’t recognize the source connection. Afterwards, the relay investigates the other person’s Ricochet ID and searches the available relays that can properly connect to. All the enlisted relays change every 24 hours so it can randomize and anonymize the communication. Also, each user reaches another via three relays, as a result, at any time clients will shift relays so they won’t communicate directly.

“At no point do you ever contact anyone directly”. Brook adds “There is no way you could find my IP address or anything about who I am or where I am.”

Apparently, this is the brightest solution to bounce harmful Metadata collection in bulk from NSA as a group of Australian security journalists formed by Patrick Gray is joining the project citing “He [Brook] writes incredible code”.

That raise a question that if Tor network is a robust safe one? Absolutely.

Simply because Russian federal governments are willing to pay a whopping 111,000 $ if anyone can de-anonymize Tor users and learn every technical bit of that system. So to date, Tor is a serious in-your-face to spy agencies.

Now, the apple of this article’s eye is that the brain behind Ricochet, John Brook, has been working with Jolla and now lives in Utah. It’s no drama to think a person with this background should’ve worked with Jolla to ensure Sailfish security which Sailors stressed on it before.

Ricochet is available to download as a binary, for now. It’s yet to enter Mobile platforms but a tweet from John ensures Jolla users to get this app first among other platforms if Ricochet makes it way to mobiles.

There are tens of Brooks at Jolla. It’s safe to say that Jolla is eyeing on brains to promote Sailfish OS and the related ecosystem. We’ve previously covered the massive axe of Nokia workers from Microsoft. From that perspective, I e-mailed Tech-department head-honcho, Stefano Mosconi and asked him if there are talented people to join Jolla after this tragedy.

“As for the chance for these guys to be hired by Jolla we are keeping our eyes and ears open for exceptional talent and everything will go through our normal hiring process.”

Do you care about how safe your IM app is? Let us know below.

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