Ukrainian software development company “Soft-Industry” in cooperation with Svitla Systems Inc. and marketing support of Ukrainian Hi-Tech Initiative successfully finished development of Zfone project ordered by the founder of PGP – Philip Zimmermann.

Zfone is a ciphering technology meant to block wiretapping of the Internet phone calls. The protection algorithm uses peer-to-peer manner of key agreement and key management between VoIP clients. Due to the fact that this technology does not rely upon any servers or persistent keys, newly developed ZRTP protocol is much more secure that its modern analogs. Zfone interoperates with SIP, RTP, SRTP protocols and Diffie-Hellman key distribution. New keys are generated for each new call.

The ZRTP protocol used by Zfone will soon be integrated into many standalone secure VoIP clients, but today there is a software product that lets turn existing VoIP client into a secure phone. The current Zfone software runs in the Internet Protocol stack on any Windows XP, Mac OS X, or Linux PC, and intercepts and filters all the VoIP packets as they go in and out of the machine, and secures the call on the fly. You can use a variety of different software VoIP clients to make a VoIP call. The Zfone software detects when the call starts, and initiates a cryptographic key agreement between the two parties, and then proceeds to encrypt and decrypt the voice packets on the fly. It has its own little separate GUI, telling the user if the call is secure. It's as if Zfone were a "bump on the cord", sitting between the VoIP client and the Internet.

It is hard to overestimate the value of Zfone, says Philip Zimmermann, as active use of Internet telephony, especially in the corporate sector, is restrained by no guarantees about confidentiality and protection of Internet calls. Currently Internet telephony is in the boom of its development. Many vendors are offering inexpensive and quality alternative to traditional telephony – Internet telephony - Voice over IP (VOIP). Although VoIP is cheaper, it is more exposed to man-in-the-middle attacks. Zfone objective is to protect privacy for IP-telephony, as once PGP guaranteed security of email correspondence.

Zfone is a new secure VoIP phone software product which lets you make secure encrypted phone calls over the Internet. It lets you whisper in someone's ear from a thousand miles away.

 

 Philip Zimmermann 

Soft Industry

Svitla Systems