Nautilus Secure Phone - now maintained in Germany

Image courtesy of Wired Magazine ( "Can Nautilus sink Clipper", August 1995, p33" )

Nautilus was written by Bill Dorsey, Andy Fingerhut, Paul Rubin, Bill Soley and David Miller. Their Old Homepage "http://www.lila.com/nautilus/" was put offline by the original developers, maintenance/archival has been taken over by german developers.

The Current Version of Nautilus is 1.8rc1 (released in June 2009)

Main Project Page: http://developer.berlios.de/projects/nautilus/.

Latest Developments:

June, 2009

Much has happended since the last release. NAT is now everywhere, making nautilus nearly unusable. With openvpn any internet telephony can be secured. Nautilus's spartan command line and "Walkie talkie" like simplex sound are below todays user expectations. But still a simple and lightweight telephone application that encrypts "out of the box" while maintaining "perfect forward security" could have its place. Development for NAT traversal has started in CVS. A helper application will be used to open a port forwarding in the NAT firewall. The helper application could later be integrated. See "doc/TIPS". Tests are needed to show real world usability. But beware: It will not be as easy as S****.

January, 2001

Nautilus Sources are no managed in a CVS repository at a German Sourceforge Clone called "Berlios". Check it out here. If you want to contribute, please get a Login at the Developers Main page. You can also subscribe to the nautilus project mailing list.

December, 2000

The 1.7c release integrates some minor patches. Modem init strings are now possible, config files handling is more UNIX-like in the UNIX Version, building the Linux Version works smoother. Also we added Binary Linux Packages. A regular 1.7c source release to some soon

January, 1999

The 1.7b release is the last release done by the original developers. They say it 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 download from the USA or 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).

Where can I get Nautilus?

Although the US Authorities begin to take a less restrictive attitude to "export" of crypto software, we recommend to download the software from This server

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

Secure Telefony Group Erlangen
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 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 is fixed in release 1.7c.
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. HELP We need Volunteers to fix this !

Credits: Below is a list of the original Nautilus developers (and their last known email address)

Bill Dorsey Andy Fingerhut Paul Rubin Bill Soley David Miller

Last modified: Friday, 281-Jun-2009 Hosted by