The team at Vysk Communications have developed a phone case that, according to its inventor Victor Cocchia, makes your iPhone “unhackable”. Called the QS1, the $230 case has its own circuitry, its own battery pack, microphone and shutters that physically block the front and rear facing cameras.

The idea is that your calls and texts can’t be monitored because the encryption happens outside the phone, and not on the “compromised” software installed on the phone. Cocchia explained to me:

“The encryption(保護碼)is happening on the hardware chip. The communication then goes through the phone, so this way there’s no way for someone who’s got control of the phone to hear what you’re saying,” he says.

“And then we decided just in case any of those were compromised, we would put a mechanical device on the phone that physically jams the microphones.”

Security experts haven’t  been able to point out a flaw in the QS1, yet. But doubts have been raised about the lack of open source code. Egemen Tas, vice president of engineering at security specialist Comodo, told me:

“In order to gain the confidence of private, anonymous or sensitive users and have a wide spread adoption, they should make their core technologies open source and open to an independent audit.”