PGP co-founder takes OS security job with Apple

Jon Callas, who as co-founder and chief technologist of PGP helped bring strong encryption to the masses, has taken a job with Apple working on operating-system security. His move around the beginning of the year was confirmed by two of his long-time friends and this brief bio, which says Callas remains on PGP's technical …

[Anonymous Coward]

Rephrased

"Any designer of new features and systems needs to answer the question, 'What did Linux Security Modules do?'

[ElReg!comments!Pierre]

to be fair...

... Linux security guys first looked at what MULTIX and VMS did. Whether they improved on these models or just mitigated structural issues is open to discussion (most *BSD people, for example, would tell you that the Linux security model sucks moose balls. Most VMS people would probably not even utter the words "Linux" and "security" in the same sentence without washing their mouth with black soap immediately afterwards. But IT is all about making exactly the right amount of compromise. Or so I've been told.).

Good news for the Church of Jobs anyway. With the usual reservation: you can have all the security experts you want, it won't help you the least if their choices are overridden by the marketting dept. (see MS history for proof).

[Red Bren]

PGP for the Mac

It sounds like he is in the perfect position to answer a couple of questions

1) Why did it take PGP so long to release a version compatible with Snow Leopard?

2) How can PGP justify charging UK customers £99 to download their Desktop Home product, when US customers only pay $99?

[william henderson 1]

how about;

"because that's what every other company does in the UK"?

[A J Stiles]

Or do what everybody else does

and use GnuPG, which is free as in £0 and you still get the Source Code.

[Anonymous Coward]

This bodes well

for improved security on OS X in all of its incarnations.

[John Smith 19]

Cryptographer with awareness of OS history and people skills

Quick, we must find him a mate.

[Mick F]

at last

some level of security for the Mac.

[Kurgan]

Ha! Security means "security for Apple, against users"

I suppose that he will work on MacOS and on the iPhone (and iPad) to make them even harder do crack/copy/alter/install on another device.

Apple is not interested in the user's needs, only in its own needs.

[Anonymous Coward]

@Ha!

>I suppose that he will work on MacOS and on the iPhone (and iPad) to make them even harder do crack/copy/alter/install on another device.

Doubt it, why take on a job that you could only fail at? More likely they're sick of being first to fall in pwn2owns and also battening down prior to the inevitable onslaught of iPhone malware.

[Anonymous Coward]

RE: Rephrased

...alternatively they could ask themselves:

""Any designer of new features and systems needs to answer the question, 'What doesn't Microsoft security do?'"

[Anonymous Coward]

Security

Why do we never hear good news about Windows security?

[Astarte]

Now what will happen to PGP?

Will this mean that Apple will claim IPR on PGP and prohibit Jon Callas from ever updating it?

[Anonymous Coward]

That explains

How the cult-of-cupertino is going about their new DRM solutions.

[Anonymous Coward]

Tombo

>Why do we never hear good news about Windows security

What are you talking about? There are countless releases about all the security holes they keep fixing! Remember that security initiative, apparently its a big job.