John McAfee, millionaire founder of security giant McAfee, claims he is developing a tool that would render the Internet unhackable.
McAfee has been known for his bizarre behaviour, and is still wanted for questioning in Belize, over a case involving drugs, poison and murder.
In a video posted on The Blaze, in which he speaks at the C2SV Technology Conference and Music Festival, McAfee says the product has been on his mind for years.
"I can't get out of security, for some reason ? it's part of my brain, part of my thinking. We don't have much security anymore, not in the online world."
He goes on to say the National Security Agency (NSA) helped to break every single encryption outlet used today. "They have the power and the muscle to coerce companies to give it up.
"The hackers have enormous power too," he explains. "I'm 68 years old, and if you can give me any small bit of information about yourself, I promise you, within three days, I can turn on the camera on your computer at home, and watch you do whatever you are doing."
McAfee adds that if he can do it, "any idiot" can do it, and that the world today is insecure, as are our communication platforms.
Another layer
He said he has been working for years on a solution that involves another layer to security. He describes the tool, D-Central, as a lower layer, a type of localised ever-changing network.
The device, which McAfee says will be in prototype within six months, would be portable, and allow users to create a private network wherever they are. It would have a range of approximately three city blocks and a quarter mile in the country. Essentially, the network would change or move as people move in and out of the local area.
In addition, the tool has no unique identifier as it is in a constant state of flux, and as the networks cannot be seen by each other, it is impossible to tell which user is doing what, where or when.
More questions than answers
Steve Wozniak commented in a video clip on ABC Local, saying he doesn't see how an existing infrastructure that is so vast can be modified. He likened it to getting rid of all the highways and cars in the world, and adopting some other means of transportation.
Whether this will be the "silver bullet" is really hard to say, adds security researcher Ian Farquhar. He says the details so far are scarce, but on the face of what has been released so far, he is highly dubious.
"What I have heard of, is a device which sets up an ad hoc mesh network. Presumably it will use something like onion routing (a la Tor)."
However, he says this poses several questions. Firstly, how resilient is their protocol to deliberately attempt subversion, such as the introduction of malicious nodes to the mesh?
Secondly, what level of assurance does the platform have? "Assurance is hard - just because you have a clever protocol doesn't mean someone hasn't messed with your random number generator. What about the rest of the solution?"
Thirdly, says Farquhar, every transmitter is subtly different. "This is because of components in the transmitter having different values, within a tolerance range. Decades ago, the NSA would track and identify Soviet subs by characterising their transmission characteristics. They couldn't break the traffic, but they knew which sub it was because they 'fingerprinted' its transmitter. How would they prevent that with this device?"
Farquhar also wonders about the practicality of this device creating an entire dark network with services most people would want to use. "It's easy to see this quickly becoming an online red light district, rather than a viable competitor to the current Internet."
He says location privacy is a fascinating issue, and the potential for government and non-government abuse is huge. "I look forward to hearing more about this device, but I do have my doubts based on what I have heard so far."
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