Andrea Bittau knows how to eavesdrop and break encrypted protocols. He contributed attacks on WEP and worked on the first open-source Bluetooth sniffer. He is currently a Computer Science postdoc at Stanford University. His friends refer to him as the man-in-the-middle, and rumor has it that tcpcrypt's default vulnerability to MITM attacks is actually a "feature" added by Andrea.

Mike Hamburg knows how to make ciphers go fast. He contributed one of the fastest AES implementations. Mike's AES code in tcpcrypt—codenamed "Blackbird"—easily exceeds Mach 3.

Mark Handley knows how to build protocols. He contributed SIP, SDP, SAP, PIM-SM, TFRC, DCCP and 30 RFCs that would take too long to list. He is Professor of Networked Systems at UCL. Mark published guidelines on how middleboxes and networks should behave and normalize traffic, so he knows all the backdoors and made sure that tcpcrypt will survive on the Internet.

David Mazieres knows how to build secure systems. He contributed SFS, a secure filesystem; SUNDR, a file system that stores data on untrusted servers; and HiStar, an OS that allows running untrusted code in a secure manner. He is Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University. David doesn't trust anything, not even tcpcrypt, hence why we left authentication to applications (which David will write).

Dan Boneh knows how to build cryptosystems. He contributed identity-based encryption systems, attacks on RSA and numerous other systems. Dan is Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering and Stanford University, with a research focus in applied cryptography and computer security. Tcpcrypt is the first protocol to be officially Boneh-certified, a distinguished label that makes even the boldest hackers run away.

Quinn Slack knows these guys. He is an undergrad studying CS at Stanford University. Quinn's early encounter with, and circumvention of, his middle school's Web filtering software introduced him to the field of network security. He hopes that tcpcrypt will lead a new generation of children to grow up to be active network attackers, not just passive ones.

Tcpcrypt was funded by NSF Cybertrust awards CNS-0716806 and CNS-1052985 (CT-T: A Clean-Slate Infrastructure for Information Flow Control), and by a gift from Intel corporation to Brad Karp. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recomendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation (NSF).