The mainstream does not care if your cryptography actually works

Just pretend you&#x27;re offering strong cryptography and you can make USD 440,000 within 24 hours.<p>This is because the mainstream does not care if your cryptography really works. You must only make them comfortable believing it.<p>Following the WhatsApp acquisition deal, Swiss mobile messenger Threema [1][2] got 200,000 new users within 24 hours [3], each paying at least USD 2,20 for the app in advance.<p>Threema is proprietary. There is no information as to the protocols and algorithms used. But the public is fine with that.<p>Not only are users celebrating the app. They feel that convincing their friends to go there is the expression of a new movement, reinforced by the NSA revelations and the WhatsApp deal.<p>Threema got free press coverage by the most popular and trustworthy newspapers in Germany, including zeit.de, spiegel.de, focus.de, heise.de, stern.de, focus.de, handelsblatt.com and bild.de.<p>We had that already: Telegram, whose team &quot;consists of six ACM champions, half of them Ph.Ds in math&quot; [4]. Telegram decided to provide open APIs and even start a contest to inspect their cryptography.<p>As it turns out, this was a mistake: While Telegram has been massively criticized for its contest and rolling their own cryptography [5], closed-source Threema is winning.<p>After all, people just want to <i>feel</i> save.<p>[1] https:&#x2F;&#x2F;play.google.com&#x2F;store&#x2F;apps&#x2F;details?id=ch.threema.app [2] https:&#x2F;&#x2F;itunes.apple.com&#x2F;de&#x2F;app&#x2F;threema&#x2F;id578665578?mt=8 [3] http:&#x2F;&#x2F;bit.ly&#x2F;1nVb8Y5 (Google Translate) [4] https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=6916860 [5] http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cryptofails.com&#x2F;post&#x2F;70546720222&#x2F;telegrams-cryptanalysis-contest