Welcome to the Nautilus Secure Phone Homepage

Image courtesy of Wired Magazine (August 1995, p33)

The Current Version of Nautilus is 1.7b (released in January 1999)

Latest Developments:

January, 1999

The 1.7b release is only a bug-fixing release. Several bugs have been corrected in the Unix version and the occasional crashes reported earlier with the 32-bit Windows version appear to have been corrected. Source code for the 1.7b release (both Unix and Windows versions) is now available for downloading from this site.

September, 1998

The long awaited release of a version of Nautilus that will run on win32 platforms (WinNT and Windows '95) is finally here. It is available for download by U.S. and Canadian residents. Click here for instructions on how to download it from this site.

An experimental address registration service has been set up at this site for the convenience of Nautilus users. If you are wondering how to figure out the IP address of people you'd like to talk to using Nautilus, click here to give it a try. If you just want to see who is currently registered, click here.

What is Nautilus?

Nautilus is a program which allows two parties to hold a secure voice conversation. Released in May of 1995, it ran on ordinary phone lines using a pair of modems (one at each end). Version 1.5a added the ability to work over TCP/IP networks including the Internet (Unix versions only). Version 1.6a release was released in June of 1997, and was primarilly a bug fix release. Version 1.7a was released in September, 1998. In addition to some minor bug fixes, it adds support for 32-bit Microsoft Windows platforms including Windows 95, 98, and NT.

Information on where to obtain the latest release is available in the next section.

For more detailed information on the functionality and operation of Nautilus, check out the manual (needs updating). Please read the system requirements section before contacting the developers with problems. If you have questions or comments about Nautilus that are not answered in the manual, you may contact the developers by sending mail to the Nautilus developers list..

Where can I get Nautilus?

Please be advised that the US Department of Commerce considers the encryption contained in Nautilus to be regulated under the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) Commerce Control List (CCL) and may not be legally exportable from the USA without specific permission from the Bureau of Export Administration (BXA). Such regulation was the responsibility of the US Department of State's Arms Export Control Act (AECA) & US Munitions List (USML) of the International Traffic in Arms Regulation (ITAR) until the November 15, 1996 Executive Order #13026 of President Clinton.

However, the landmark Federal Court of California ruling of Bernstein vs. US Department of State has upheld the right of US citizens to freely publish cryptographic software they have authored via the internet.

Click here if you want to download the 32-bit Windows version of Nautilus 1.7b. If you have problems downloading it from this site, you can get version 1.7a from the North American Cryptography Archives. If you are looking for the complete source code for both the Unix and Windows versions of Nautilus 1.7b, you can get it here.

Older (1.5a and earlier) versions of Nautilus appear to be available from the following sites around the world:

ftp://ftp.replay.com/pub/replay/pub/voice

ftp://ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/crypto/misc

ftp://ftp.auscert.org.au/pub/coast/mirrors/ftp.master.pgp.net/cryAlthough%20we%20have%20taken%20every%20reasonable%20precaution%20to%20assure%20that%20Nautilus%20was%20not%20exported,%20it%20appears%20that%20one%20or%20more%20persons%20unknown%20to%20us%20have%20exported%20Nautilus%20(in%20violation%20of%20US%20federal%20regulation).%20We%20intend%20to%20continue%20to%20abide%20by%20the%20letter%20of%20US%20law%20in%20this%20matter;%20however%20we%20will%20list%20non-US%20ftp%20sites%20from%20which%20Nautilus%20may%20be%20obtained%20as%20a%20public%20service:%20to/misc/nautilus-1.5a.tar.gz

ftp://ftp.franken.de/pub/crypt/misc/nautilus-1.5a.tar.gz

ftp://ftp.um.es/mirror/ftp.replay.com/voice/nautilus-1.5a.tar.gz

ftp://ftp.lander.es/pub/crypt/misc/nautilus-1.5a.tar.gz

ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/crypt/utilities/phone/nautilus-1.5a.tar.gz

Note that we have taken every reasonable precaution to assure that Nautilus was not exported. However, it appears that one or more persons unknown to us have exported Nautilus (in violation of US federal regulation). We intend to continue to abide by the letter of US law in this matter; however we will list non-US ftp sites from which Nautilus may be obtained as a public service.

Here are some URLs that contain related information that may be of interest:

• Report reveals that thousands of innocent people may have been illegally monitored in violation of federal law
• For more information on the current state of cryptography, check out http://www.crypto.com/.
• The Electronic Frontier Foundation defends our right to privacy and freedom of expression on the Internet.
• The Internet Privacy Coalition promotes privacy and security on the Internet through the use of strong encryption.

Here is a list of known problems or bugs in the 1.7b release:

• Unlike Nautilus v1.0a, v1.7b will not allow modem users to "go secure" in the middle of a regular telephone conversation. This should be fixed in a future release.
• The Windows version of Nautilus 1.7b only works over a network. In order to connect to another user without going through the Internet (or an intranet), you will need to specially configure Dial-Up Networking. This will be fixed in the next release.

Below is a list of people on the current Nautilus development team:

Bill Of Rights Enforcement