SLICE OF MIT - Nov 28 - Maxwell Krohn helped revolutionize internet dating in the early 2000s with a site he cofounded with college buddies: OkCupid. They sold the site in 2011, and Krohn began to have second thoughts about all the sensitive personal information that people were launching into the cloud. His latest venture, Keybase, tackles that problem head-on, harnessing studies in cryptography he began at MIT to create a simple but powerful platform for securing user data. Keybase, which Krohn cofounded with OkCupid veteran Chris Coyne, employs what's known as end-to-end encryption to keep user data totally secret - even from the apps through which users might share their data - so no third party can hijack it along the way. Sending information on Keybase requires both sender and recipient to have their own pair of public and private keys. Senders use recipients' public keys to encrypt the data. To ensure recipients are who they say they are, Keybase links the ownership of public keys with multiple email, Twitter, Reddit, and other social-media accounts.
by Michael Blanding
See full article at Slice of MIT
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