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A technical walkthrough explains how to manually create a LUKS-encrypted disk volume on Fedora using sgdisk and cryptsetup, then format it with ext4 and test mounting. The guide also introduces managing LUKS key slots as a step toward enrolling keys in a TPM2 chip to avoid repeatedly typing a disk encryption password.
A cipher created around 1950 by a researcher, built on a method devised by psychologist Robert Thouless, has reportedly been solved. Thouless had outlined the technique in a 1948 paper titled 'A Test of Survival,' which used an unbreakable-without-key cipher system, demonstrated with the phrase 'THERE IS NO DEATH' encrypted using Hamlet's 'To be or not to be' speech as the key.
Canada is weighing legislation that critics say would effectively mandate backdoors and expanded data retention in encrypted services. Psiphon VPN and Signal have said they would leave the Canadian market rather than comply, while Apple, Meta, DuckDuckGo and NordVPN have also criticized or said they'd reconsider their presence in the country.
WhatsApp has officially launched guest calling, letting users invite people without a WhatsApp account to join one-on-one or group calls of up to 32 participants via a shared link. Guests wait in a lobby for host approval, can't see other participants' phone numbers or send messages, and can join from a browser without installing the app. The feature supports screen sharing, hand-raising and reactions, and WhatsApp says it plans Google Calendar and Outlook integrations later this year.
WhatsApp has rolled out a guest calling feature that lets users invite people to a call without requiring them to have a WhatsApp account, by sending a call link that works in a browser. Guests get access to features like screen sharing, hand raising, and emoji reactions under end-to-end encryption, but must wait for host approval and can't see other participants' phone numbers or add others to the call. Meta says Google and Outlook calendar integrations for WhatsApp calls are coming later this year via a plugin.
In this reprinted 1991 guide (updated 1999), Phil Zimmermann describes why he built Pretty Good Privacy, arguing that email and electronic communication lack the inherent privacy once guaranteed by face-to-face conversation. He contends that government surveillance of digital communication is far cheaper and easier than intercepting paper mail or phone calls, prompting him to create software letting ordinary people encrypt their messages.
A new chat platform called Strafe has launched, offering end-to-end encrypted messaging, voice and video calls, file sharing, and community spaces organized into rooms and roles. The project is open source and self-hostable, letting users run their own isolated instance instead of relying on a central server.
WhatsApp is rolling out parental controls letting guardians manage who teens interact with, including channel usage, Status visibility, group additions, and profile picture access. Parents can also receive notifications about teens' group activity and set Meta AI content restrictions, choosing between a default 13+ setting or a stricter 'Limited Content' mode that disables features like incognito chat. All settings require a parent-set PIN to change, and WhatsApp says messages and calls remain end-to-end encrypted.
Signal has released version 8.30, extending its end-to-end encrypted backup feature to iOS, macOS, Windows and Linux after debuting on Android nearly a year ago. Users can choose Signal-hosted backups, capped at 45 days of media for free accounts, or unlimited on-device local backups, both requiring a recovery key to decrypt. The update also unifies Android's backup format with other platforms, separates media storage from backup archives to avoid duplication, and lets paying users purge old media locally while retrieving it from hosted backups.
A hobbyist shared a Show HN post featuring a working 3D model of the WWII-era Enigma encryption machine, demonstrating how a message is typed, encrypted letter by letter, and transmitted via simulated Morse code over radio. The project visualizes how the encrypted signal could be openly broadcast yet remain unreadable without the correct machine settings.
Cloudflare announced plans to become a publicly trusted Certificate Authority, issuing both standard TLS certificates and new post-quantum Merkle Tree Certificates. The company also agreed to acquire root CA key material from GlobalSign to gain broad trust across existing browsers and devices without requiring website operators to change tools.
A team including UC San Diego professor Nadia Heninger published research describing a new classical-computing attack that forges RSA signatures without factoring the underlying keys. The method reportedly cracked deprecated 1024-bit RSA keys in a few months using an academic CPU cluster, far less effort than factoring would require, and it also degrades the theoretical security of 2048- and 4096-bit keys.