Google Summer of Code 2015

OpenKeychain is part of Google Summer of Code 2015 and we accepted 3 students to work on exciting new features. To all students that have not been accepted this year: We’re sorry. We had several excellent proposals this year, and had to make some tough choices.

The following interesting topics have been choosen:

Adithya Abraham Philip will be working on allowing the automatic, periodic sync of keys with keysevers. Since this potentially exposes a user’s contacts, he is implementing Tor and proxy support too - encryption is synonymous with privacy. He would also be adding support for revocation certificates and key revocation when a key is deleted. Overall, his efforts are expected to ensure a more convenient - and safe - experience for OpenKeychain’s users.

Masaya Iseki will implement support for Ed25519 / EdDSA to enhance the security and performance of OpenKeychain. Ed25519 / EdDSA is more secure and faster than the currentl supported algorithms. He will implement Ed25519 operations, the algorithm of EdDSA and adapt these implementations to existing implementations.

Daniel Ramos will work on Passphrase Alternatives by adding new key unlocking methods that the user can choose from. These unlocking alternatives may be combinations of QR Code, NFC, passphrase, fingerprint and lock pattern.

We hope you have a great summer this year and I am personally looking forward actually using these features in an upcoming version of OpenKeychain!

- Dominik