ANNOUNCING Bitmask, the Internet Encryption Toolkit, release 0.6.1

The LEAP  team is  pleased to announce  the immediate  availability of
version 0.6.1 of Bitmask,  the Internet Encryption  Toolkit,  codename
"knock knock knocking on beta's door".

https://downloads.leap.se/client/

LEAP  (LEAP  Encryption Access  Project)  develops  a plan  to  secure
everyday communication, breaking down into discrete services.

Bitmask is  the desktop client to  connect to the services  offered by
the LEAP  Platform.  In the  current phase the supported  services are
Encrypted Internet Proxy and Encrypted Mail.

The   Encrypted  Internet   Proxy  provides   circumvention,  location
anonymization, and traffic encryption  in a hassle-free, automatically
self-configuring fashion.

WARNING (LINUX  ONLY): If  you ever run  into the situation  where you
cannot  access  internet, open  the  terminal  and  run the  following
command:

$ pkexec /usr/local/sbin/bitmask-root firewall stop

If for  some reason that  doesn't work, you  will need to  reboot your
computer.

Encrypted  Mail offers  automatic encryption  and decryption  for both
outgoing and  incoming email, adding  public key cryptography  to your
mail  without you  ever  having  to worry  about  key distribution  or
signature verification.

You can read about this and many  other cool things in the user manual
and the developer notes, which can be found online at:

https://leap.se/en/docs/client

WARNING: This is still  part of a beta release of  our software, a lot
of testing and auditing is still needed, so indeed use it, and feed us
back, fork it  and contribute to its development, but  by any means DO
NOT trust your life to it.

WHAT CAN THIS VERSION OF BITMASK DO FOR ME?

Bitmask 0.6.1  is the new stable  version of the client  after the big
refactor,  with  a  little face  lift  of  the  UI  while we  were  at
it. Encrypted  Email is still not  stable though, so don't  use it for
high security. Encrypted Internet is  the first service we are calling
stable, although  its security level is  just a bit higher  than plain
OpenSSL, so  use accordingly. You can  refer to the CHANGELOG  for the
meat.

Encrypted Internet on Linux now  helps you don't shoot yourself in the
foot  by   leaking  traffic  outside  of  the   secure  connection  it
establishes. This will be added to other platforms in the future.

The Encrypted Mail services will run local SMTP and IMAP proxies that,
once you configure the mail  client of your choice, will automatically
encrypt and decrypt your email using GPG encryption under the hood.

If it  is the first  time you run Bitmask,  the first run  wizard will
help you registering an user  with your selected provider, downloading
all the config files needed to connect to the various LEAP services.

LICENSE

You may  use Bitmask under the  GNU General Public License,  version 3
or, at your option, any later  version. See the file "LICENSE" for the
terms of the GNU General Public License, version 3.

In  addition,  as a  special  exception,  the copyright  holders  give
permission  to link  the code  of portions  of this  program with  the
OpenSSL  library  under  certain   conditions  as  described  in  each
individual source  file, and distribute linked  combinations including
the two.

INSTALLATION

We distribute the current version of Bitmask as standalone bundles for
GNU/Linux, OSX and Windows, but it is likely  that you are able to run
it under other systems, specially if you are  skillful and patience is
one of your virtues.

Have a look at "docs/user/install.rst".

Packages  are  also  provided  for  debian  and  ubuntu,  add the leap
repository to your apt sources:

deb http://deb.leap.se/debian wheezy main

We will  love to hear  if you are  interested in help  making packages
available for any other system.

BUGS

You can send the bugs our way  by pointing your telnet session to port
443 on https://leap.se/code.  We will do  our best to make them follow
our intensive bug-reeducation program.

HACKING

You can find us in the #leap channel on the freenode network.

If you are lucky enough, you can also spot us drinking mate, sleepless
in night  trains, rooftops,  rainforests, lonely islands  and, always,
beyond any border.

The LEAP team,

August 15, 2014
Somewhere in the middle of the intertubes.
EOF