Jon Callas is an American computer security expert, software engineer, user experience designer, and technologist who is the co-founder and former CTO of the global encrypted communications service Silent Circle. He has held major positions at Digital Equipment Corporation, Apple, PGP, and Entrust, and is considered "one of the most respected and well-known names in the mobile security industry." Callas is credited with creating several Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standards, including OpenPGP, DKIM, and ZRTP, which he wrote. Prior to his work at Entrust, he was Chief Technical Officer and co-founder of PGP Corporation and the former Chief Technical Officer of Entrust.
On his website, Callas describes himself as "an entrepreneur and innovator in information and business security, including cryptography, operating system security, public key infrastructure, and intellectual property rights," as well as "an innovator in human-computer interactions, collaboration and social virtual reality."
He has also worked for Bruce Schneier's Counterpane Internet Security, was one of the primary authors of the DKIM method, and was Chief Scientist of the original PGP, Inc. founded by Phil Zimmermann. Callas is a member of the Infosec think tank The Shmoo Group.
Early life and education
Callas received a BSc in mathematics from the University of Maryland at College Park, which he attended from 1977 to 1980. He minored in philosophy and English literature.
Career
He was a member of the technical staff at Century Computing from 1980 to 1981, then served as principal software engineer at Digital Equipment from 1981 to 1993. While working there, he "got to work on a wide variety of things, from graphics to schedulers to memory management to operating system security," and created a random password generator. At Digital Equipment, he designed the PATHWORKS network operating system as well as software for Macintosh client systems and server systems running VMS or UNIX, and created cross-platform communications between computers running Mac OS, VMS, UNIX, Windows and OS/2, using AppleTalk, DECnet, and TCP/IP networks. He also developed software for 3D, PEX, and DDX for OpenVMS, OSF/1 and Windows NT.
After Digital Equipment folded, Callas co-founded World Benders, Inc., where he worked from 1993 to 1995. At World Benders, he "was the lead architect and developer of Meeting Space, a cross-platform group collaboration product" that "allowed people to conduct meetings in real-time on existing networks."
Callas then held the title of senior scientist II at Apple Computer from 1995 to 1997. He describes himself as having been the firm's Security Privateer, and as having "designed and built next-generation cryptographic security products for Mac OS X and iOS, including the 'FileVault 2' full-disk encryption product." He also "designed a concurrent programming system for high-performance computing, 'Transforms.'" In addition, he "led the engineering and approvals for a FIPS 140 validation of iOS." Callas was trusted with the security of Apple's operating system, and worked on Apple's Whole Disk Encryption. "That was the worst time to be working for Apple, the year before Steve Jobs came back," Callas has said.
At Apple, he worked for Gursharan Sidhu, the inventor of AppleTalk. Callas "shipped the very first crypto built into an OS, called PowerTalk," which, he has said, "failed for being far too early," although he and his colleague Bruce Gaya managed to hack a piece of it, a password manager called The Keychain, "so that you could run it without the rest of PowerTalk, and thus rescued it from oblivion. The present Keychain on Apple products is completely and utterly rewritten, but I’m proud of saving it."
He joined PGP, Inc. (developer of Pretty Good Privacy), in January 1997 as chief scientist. Network Associates (NAI) bought PGP in December 1997, and Callas became CTO for the Total Network Security Division of NAI, creating "architecture and direction for the company's network security products" and serving as "the primary author of the IETF's OpenPGP standard."