Whisper Systems was an American enterprise mobile security company that was co-founded by security researcherMoxie Marlinspike and roboticist Stuart Anderson in 2010.[1][2] The company was acquired byTwitter in November 2011.[3][4][5] Some of the company's software products were released underopen-source licenses after the acquisition.[6] An independent group calledOpen Whisper Systems later picked up the development of this open-source software,[7] which led to the creation of theSignal Technology Foundation.[8][9]
Security researcherMoxie Marlinspike and roboticist Stuart Anderson co-founded Whisper Systems in 2010.[10][1] The company producedproprietary enterprise mobile security software. Among these were an encrypted texting program calledTextSecure and an encrypted voice calling app calledRedPhone.[11] They also developed a firewall and tools for encrypting other forms of data.[1][12]
On November 28, 2011, Whisper Systems announced that it had been acquired byTwitter. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed by either company.[3] The acquisition was done "primarily so that Mr. Marlinspike could help the then-startup improve its security".[13] Shortly after the acquisition, Whisper Systems' RedPhone service was made unavailable.[14] Some criticized the removal, arguing that the software was "specifically targeted [to help] people under repressive regimes" and that it left people like the Egyptians in "a dangerous position" during the events of the2011 Egyptian revolution.[15]
Marlinspike later left Twitter and foundedOpen Whisper Systems as a collaborative Open Source project for the continued development of TextSecure and RedPhone.[19][7] Open Whisper Systems consisted of a large community of volunteer Open Source contributors, as well as a small team of dedicated grant-funded developers. In November 2015, Open Whisper Systems merged TextSecure with RedPhone and renamed it asSignal.[20] In 2018, Signal Messenger was incorporated as an LLC by Moxie Marlinspike andBrian Acton and then rolled under the independent non-profitSignal Technology Foundation. Today, the Signal app is developed by Signal Messenger LLC, which is funded by the Signal Foundation.[8][9] The foundation has stated publicly that they are not tied to any major technology companies and "can never be acquired by one either."[21]
Whisper Systems' products were all made for Android and included:[22]
TextSecure: An app that allowed the user to exchange end-to-end encryptedSMS messages with other TextSecure users.
RedPhone: An app that allowed the user to make end-to-end encryptedVoIP calls to other RedPhone users.
Flashback: An app that allowed the user to store encrypted backups of their device in thecloud.[23]
WhisperCore: An app that integrated with the underlying Android OS to protect everything the user kept on their phone. The initial beta featured full disk encryption, network security tools, encrypted backup, selective permissions, and basic platform management tools forNexus S andNexus One phones.
WhisperMonitor: An app that worked with WhisperCore to provide a software firewall capable of dynamicegress filtering and real-time connection monitoring, giving the user control over where their data was going and what their apps were doing.[24]
^ab"A New Home". Open Whisper Systems. 2013-01-21. Retrieved2014-03-01.
^abMarlinspike, Moxie; Acton, Brian (21 February 2018)."Signal Foundation".Signal.org.Archived from the original on 16 February 2020. Retrieved21 February 2018.
^Chris Aniszczyk (20 December 2011)."The Whispers Are True".The Twitter Developer Blog. Twitter. Archived fromthe original on 24 October 2014. Retrieved22 January 2015.
