Technical reports
CoverDrop White Paper
Daniel Hugenroth, Sam Cutler, Dominic Kendrick, Mario Savarese, Zeke Hunter-Green, Philip McMahon, Marjan Kalanaki, Diana A. Vasile, Sabina Bejasa-Dimmock, Luke Hoyland, Alastair R. Beresford
June 2025, 28 pages
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.48456/tr-999 |
Abstract
The free press fulfills an important function in a democracy. It can provide individuals with a mechanism through which they can hold powerful people and organizations to account. In previous work, the University of Cambridge developed CoverDrop: a set of extensions to a typical news app which provided a secure and usable method of establishing initial contact between journalists and sources. Since publication, The Guardian and the University of Cambridge have undertaken further work on the design, highlighting additional challenges and shortcomings which needed to be addressed before deployment. This white paper presents an updated design of the CoverDrop system which addresses these issues, and describes the version that The Guardian first deployed in April 2025.
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BibTeX record
@TechReport{UCAM-CL-TR-999,
author = {Hugenroth, Daniel and Cutler, Sam and Kendrick, Dominic and
Savarese, Mario and Hunter-Green, Zeke and McMahon, Philip
and Kalanaki, Marjan and Vasile, Diana A. and
Bejasa-Dimmock, Sabina and Hoyland, Luke and Beresford,
Alastair R.},
title = {{CoverDrop White Paper}},
year = 2025,
month = jun,
url = {https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/techreports/UCAM-CL-TR-999.pdf},
institution = {University of Cambridge, Computer Laboratory},
doi = {10.48456/tr-999},
number = {UCAM-CL-TR-999}
}