A brand new app helps Iranians cover messages in plain sight

An anti-government graffiti that reads in Farsi "Death to the dictator" is sprayed at a wall north of Tehran on September 30, 2009.

Enlarge / An anti-government graffiti that reads in Farsi “Loss of life to the dictator” is sprayed at a wall north of Tehran on September 30, 2009. (credit score: Getty Pictures)

Amid ever-increasing authorities Web management, surveillance, and censorship in Iran, a brand new Android app goals to provide Iranians a approach to communicate freely.

Nahoft, which suggests “hidden” in Farsi, is an encryption software that turns as much as 1,000 characters of Farsi textual content right into a jumble of random phrases. You’ll be able to ship this mélange to a pal over any communication platform—Telegram, WhatsApp, Google Chat, and so forth.—after which they run it by Nahoft on their machine to decipher what you’ve mentioned.

Launched final week on Google Play by United for Iran, a San Francisco–primarily based human rights and civil liberties group, Nahoft is designed to deal with a number of elements of Iran’s Web crackdown. Along with producing coded messages, the app may also encrypt communications and embed them imperceptibly in picture information, a way often known as steganography. Recipients then use Nahoft to examine the picture file on their finish and extract the hidden message.

Learn 13 remaining paragraphs | Feedback

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *