Hyping VoIP encryption

Three year old Cellcrypt is getting coverage as it tries to raise several million dollars and close deals with the British government and multinational companies.  According to The Guardian, Cellcrypt has supposedly been in "stealth mode" as it has been perfecting its technology and getting security clearances from U.K. and U.S. authorities--but the company has been speaking at events and posting press releases since 2006.

Still, making mobile voice calls private isn't a bad idea, especially since one of the founders of the company was demonstrating a straightforward brute force technique of cracking the current method of GSM encryption at the March 2008 Black Hat Federal Security event in Washington D.C. 

Cellcrypt sells an end-to-end solution for encrypting voice calls using a VoIP application on the mobile phone and a PBX gateway, plus a switch to manage call routing to the appropriate IP addresses, but it's not a unique solution.  Phil Zimmermann of PGP fame has been developing his Zfone encryption solution for several years and has licensed the underlying technology to a number of companies; there's also a set of patches to put Z-cryption onto Asterisk.

For more:
- The Guardian piece on VoIP encryption company Cellcrypt trying to raise money
- Forbes.com's ringside seat to GSM encryption being cracked at Black Hat Fed

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