GoldBug is an open source secure Instant Messenger with cascade encryption, a way to secure your messages using multiple ciphers, also known as multiencryption. The program main features are encrypted groupchat, sending of encryption keys encrypting them, end to end encryption, public IRC channels with encryption, integrated BitMail, chat over Tor, forward secrecy, sending of random fake messages to confuse eavesdroppers, authenticated chat and many others.
This program constitutes a full suite of chat utilities using encryption with the advantage that you will be able to interact with your friends in multiple different ways without having to install new software, and the disadvantage being that so many buttons and technical terms can be confusing.
Encrypted Instant Messenger GoldBug
Documentation is clear and comprehensive, you can read every single feature detail in GodlBug website or download a .pdf help manual. GoldBug interface is fairly workable, with tabs quickly switching in between features, one click takes you to the IRC chat window and another click to the StarBeam filesharing and another click to the Instant Messenger chat.
After installation you will be asked to create a username and password with a minimum of 16 characters before generating the public encryption keys. GoldBug uses end to tend encryption with multiple layers implementing trusted open source cryptology like GnuPG and OpenSSL, you can set your own encryption components with RSA, EL Gamal and DSA, customizing key size, cipher, hash and iteration. Tailored integrals that should not significantly increase your security level, but nice to have anyway, the more security variables, the more an attacker will need to fingerprint you before launching an attack on the scheme you are using.
This program looks and security resembles my previously reviewed FireFloo Communicator, both programs appear to share part of the code but GoldBug has many more elements like the IRC chat, Tor and file sharing, and it is fully documented, I liked it much more because of this.
I liked that the messenger is open source and it adopts known encryption algorithms and technologies. I would feel reasonably safe behind this program, favouring it over others because third party data retention is not possible in GoldBug as there is no central server and all of the different ways it has to securely communicate with each other peer to peer, it comes out as a well thought messenger.
I wish other developers would stress user documentation as much as GoldBug has done, this is a first class secure communications program.