intelligence and national security communities.
Gilman Louie is the former CEO of In-Q-Tel, and other investors, including Richard Clarke and Michael Wertheimer, also have close ties to the U.S. On 12 October 2021, a Vice Motherboard article revealed that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had invested $1.6 million into Wickr via the CIA's shell company In-Q-Tel.
#Wickr pro desktop series#
In June 2014, Wickr announced its Series B funding round of $30 million led by Breyer Capital, including CME Group and Wargaming. The series also included investments from Juniper Networks and the Knight Foundation. In March 2014, Wickr announced its Series A funding round of $9 million led by Gilman Louie of Alsop Louie Partners. Government transparency advocates note that Maryland Governor Larry Hogan's use of Wickr destroys government records before any determination of whether they should be public can be made, under the Freedom of Information Act and state law. Īccording to The Washington Post, Wickr markets itself to government agencies. Wickr RAM was the only app that was found to meet every single criterion that was assessed. In early 2020, Wickr RAM was included in a review by the NSA of secure communication & collaboration platforms. The company said that its consumer product, Wickr Messenger, still uses another protocol and that they intend to replace this protocol with the one that they published. At the time of its publication, the crypto protocol was only used in the company's enterprise product, Wickr Professional. In February 2017, Wickr opened one of its crypto protocols for public review on GitHub and published a paper “The Wickr Messaging Protocol” as an aid to those who wish to review the source code. In December 2016, Wickr announced Wickr Professional, a new business collaboration and communication product designed to couple the functionality of tools like Slack with end-to-end encryption and ephemerality. In 2015, the Electronic Frontier Foundation announced that Wickr, among only nine companies, earned stars in every applicable category for its effort to protect user privacy: "We commend Wickr for its strong stance regarding user rights, transparency, and privacy." In 2015, Wickr published a white paper outlining the encryption protocol that they use for end-to-end encryption.
#Wickr pro desktop code#
It was missing points because its source code was not open to independent review ( open source), and because its security design was not well-documented.
It received points for having communications encrypted in transit, having communications encrypted with keys the provider didn't have access to ( end-to-end encryption), making it possible for users to independently verify their correspondent's identities, having past communications secure if the keys were stolen ( forward secrecy), and having completed a recent independent security audit. On January 5, 2015, the Electronic Frontier Foundation gave Wickr a score of 5 out of 7 points on their "Secure Messaging Scorecard". Wickr has also launched a "bug bounty program" that offers a reward to hackers who can find a vulnerability in the app. Since its launch, Wickr has gone through regular security audits by prominent information security organizations, which verified Wickr's code, security, and policies. In addition to encrypting user data and conversations, Wickr strips metadata from all content transmitted through the network. Īll communications on Wickr are encrypted locally on each device with a new key generated for each new message, meaning that no one except Wickr users has the keys to decipher their content. While Wickr Enterprise was created for companies with larger workforces to easily integrate into their organization's IT workflows. Wickr RAM was designed with the military in mind the app stays secure even in "harshest environments". Since developing its first app, Wickr Me, the company has released Wickr Pro, Wickr RAM, and Wickr Enterprise.
The release of the desktop Wickr app coincided with introducing the ability to sync messages across multiple devices, including mobile phones, tablets, and computers. In December 2014, Wickr released a desktop version of its secure communications platform. Initially unveiled on iOS and later on Android, the Wickr Me app allows users to set an expiration time for their encrypted communications.