ANNOUNCE: TKSEC 0.4.9 (with videoconferencing!)
Ed Suominen
on SourceForge, http://sf.net/projects/tksec. Screenshot is at
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/tksec/tksec-0.4.1-screenshot.png
TKSEC uses GnuPG (see http://www.gnupg.org) as an encryption and
authentication foundation and employs an FTP channel to establish TCP/IP
socket connects across a firewall. Any number of peers can use the same FTP
channel, and only those peers you have authorized (by importing their public
keys) appear in your personal subnetwork of peers who can connect with you.
If one peer is behind a firewall, he or she can request a "client only"
configuration in which his or her computer always initiates the TCP
connection from the inside out, even in response to an outside connection
request.
TKSEC comes bundled with the following free network apps, any of which it
can launch from a single, intuitive interface:
- Remote Desktop Access with TightVNC (encryption tunneling not yet
operational)
- Secure Audio Conferencing with SpeakFreely
- Video Conferencing with VIC* (encryption key has to be entered manually)
- Integrated shell for remote TCL/TK command processing (be careful!)
- NetMeeting launcher (NetMeeting is not included, but is bundled with
Windows or freely downloadable from Microsoft.)
Encrypted communications uses "vapor keys" that are generated at the start
of a TKSEC session and destroyed when it ends. If someone demands the key
you used to encrypt your secure audio conference, for example, you can
honestly tell them you don't have it anymore -- all those packets they
sniffed will be unrecoverable junk. (Oh, and there are no passphrase
keystrokes for any Trojans to sniff, either - the vapor key's passphrase is
a pseudorandom string stored only in RAM.) I make NO WARRANTIES in
connection with this software, as the license points out, but have written
it to use the security of GnuPG and hopefully achieve my goal of (1)
preventing unauthorized connections and (2) encrypting authorized ones in a
way that no one (not even the legitimate users) can reconstruct later.
This version can be distinguished from its ancestors by one notable
feature - it actually appears to work, mostly. Those of you who tried
earlier versions, please forgive me for intruding on your system with
unstable code and try again with 0.4.9. Those of you who were waiting until
this guy got his act together with software releases, please try 0.4.9. Yes,
it is still beta, and yes, some functions don't yet work, or partially work.
But what is working is really cool, if I dare say so! And I would really
appreciate some feedback and test reports from the TCL community at this
point in development. (I am also asking for help with things like a Linux
port and a config GUI window.) Please email me if you would like to use my
FTP server as a command/reply channel, and I'll send you the password for
it.
Ed Suominen
Registered Patent Agent (http://eepatents.com)
Independent Inventor of Electrical Engineering Technology
U.S. Patents 5,926,513; 5,937,341*; 6,052,748*;
6,069,913; additional patents pending* (*Available for licensing)
* Per the VIC license, "this product includes software developed by the
Computer Science Department at University College London" and "this product
includes software developed by the Computer Systems Engineering Group at
Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory."