Whistleblowers will be able to communicate with journalists more securely, thanks to new anonymous messaging technology developed by Darwin alumnus Dr Daniel Hugenroth.
Daniel, who completed a PhD in Computer Science at Darwin in 2023, is now affiliated with the College as a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Department of Computer Science and Technology. He co-led the development of CoverDrop, which encrypts outgoing messages between the source and their named contact; provides digital ‘dead drops’ where messages are left for journalists to retrieve; and pads all messages to the same length, making it harder to distinguish real messages from decoy ones.
The Guardian, whose software engineers worked alongside the Cambridge researchers, has built on the technology to launch Secure Messaging, a module within its mobile news app. Although the Guardian helped to take the idea from prototype to reality, the technology will be fully available for use by other news organisations.
“All the CoverDrop code will be available online and open source,” said Daniel. “This transparency is essential for security-critical software and allows others to audit and improve it. Open-sourcing the code also means that other news organisations, particularly those with expertise in investigative journalism, could also use it. We would be excited to see them do so.”
Find out more on the University of Cambridge website.
