GSMK CryptoPhone 500 Quick Start Manual

GSMK CryptoPhone 500
Quick Start Guide

© 2013 GSMK mbH

Berlin, Germany

http://www.cryptophone.com/

IP

0 Introduction

The CryptoPhone 500 is a state
of the art encrypted telephone
that provides you with secure
calls over IP (via GSM/EDGE, 3G
or WLAN), secure SMS, and se­cure storage for your contacts,
notes and secure SMS messages.

To protect the integrity and
security of the phone and your

data, the CryptoPhone 500 is
built on a hardened Android­based operating system and
includes additional 360° security
systems, among them a Base­band Firewall, a Permission
Enforcement Module for appli­cations and an IP Firewall.

Security Advice: You should
always keep your CryptoPhone
with you to prevent manipula-

tion by attackers gaining physi­cal access to the device.

Installing any potentially mali­cious third-party apps on your
CryptoPhone 500 may, despite
of the built-in security mea­sures, under some circumstances
compromise the security of your
data or your secure commu­nications and is therefore not
recommended.

1 Select Security Level

The operating system of
your CryptoPhone has been
hardened against a num­ber of known attacks.

To make use of this protec­tion mechanism, the rst
step to congure your
CryptoPhone before you
take it in use, is to select

the operating sys­tem’s security level
in the Security
Prole Manager
tool (this does
not inuence the
security of en­crypted telephony
or SMS).

To reduce the
likelihood of new

and unknown attacks impacting
the security of your phone, the
higher security levels disable
more applications and services
than the lower security levels.
Setting the system’s security
level thus enables you to choose
the right balance between con­venience and security by remov­ing more potentially vulnerable
components and capabilities in
the higher security levels. Please

read the description of each se­curity level carefully and choose
the level most appropriate for
you.

The default security level is
High. While you can always
switch to a different security
level later by cold booting the
phone (

see section 13), doing so

will erase all data stored on the
phone.

2 Set Passphrase for
Secure Storage

The secure storage subsystem
contains your encrypted SMS
messages, your secure contacts,
and your secure notes.

After booting up, the phone
will ask you to set the pass­phrase for the secure storage
container.

The strength of protection of
the secure storage container
depends entirely on how diffi­cult it is to guess your pass­phrase.

A passphrase consisting of at
least 16 characters, consisting
of a mix of letters, numbers and
punctuation characters, is rec­ommended. For instance, you
could use the initial letters from

the words of a poem
or song text which you
remember well and
replace some of the let­ters with numbers.

Avoid words that can be
found in a dictionary.
You can later change
the passphrase and
congure the automatic
timeout for locking the

secure storage con­tainer in the settings.

Note: If you forget
your passphrase,
there is no way to
retrieve your data.
The encryption system
contains no backdoor
or master key. So
make sure not to for­get the passphrase.

3 Check your CryptoPhone
Number

Your personal CryptoPhone
number can be found in the
“phone number” section of the
CryptoPhone settings menu.

You need to be logged into
the secure storage container to
access the settings menu. Your
passphrase will be required if

you are not logged in at the
moment. Write down your
CryptoPhone number so that
you can give it to your contacts.

Your CryptoPhone telephone
number does not change, no
matter what SIM card you put
into the phone or whether you
roaming (

see section 4), even if

you use Wireless LAN or a satel­lite terminal.

4 Data Connection
required

Please note that the Crypto­Phone 500 will establish a data
connection to stay online (so
that you can be reached) and
transmits more data when you
make or receive a call.

Normal data usage ranges from
2 to 5 Megabytes per 24 hours

in standby mode to keep the
CryptoPhone connected.

Using the CP500 over a mobile
phone network (3G/UMTS,
EDGE, or GSM GPRS) without
an affordable data plan can
result in high charges. When
you are roaming on a foreign
network, your mobile network
operator will typically bill you
for additional roaming charges.

To avoid such costs it is strongly
recommended to use tariff
plans with data at rates.

Tip: When traveling abroad,
obtain a pre-paid SIM card from
a local network of the country
you are going to that offers a
reasonable data plan (remem­ber that your CryptoPhone
number does not change when
you change the SIM card).

Troubleshooting: If you experi­ence difculties in getting your
data connection to work, set
the phone to “Basic Security” or
“Medium Security” (

see sections 1

and 13).

Then work with your network
operator to set the correct APN
address and user conguration
until you can use the phone’s
web browser to access the Inter-

net. Alternatively, use Wireless
LAN / WiFi to connect to the
Internet.

When you can access the In­ternet from your web browser,
your CryptoPhone should also
be able to establish secure con­nections.

CryptoPhone IP calls require a
working Internet connection.

5 Connect to Secure
Network

To connect your
CryptoPhone to the
secure network, press
the offline status icon on the
CryptoPhone main screen.

It will show an ani-
mation while it tries
to connect.