Encrypted Messaging App Kibu Targets Military Communications Gap with Identity Verification

HONOLULU—A new encryption-based application, Kibu, now available to U.S. military operators and foreign partners, could reshape how militaries and civilians communicate securely.

Government officials and civilians alike routinely rely on commercial messaging apps on personal devices, often in situations where they should not. U.S. operators in Poland and elsewhere, for instance, have coordinated with Ukrainian counterparts via Signal due to its ubiquity on consumer phones.

However, these conversations—especially those involving U.S. special operators—frequently traverse networks the U.S. military does not control, known as “dirty networks.” This vulnerability arises because allied militaries often lack access to U.S. top-secret communication platforms, a challenge underscored during multiple sessions at the recent Global SOF Indo-Pacific Irregular Warfare Symposium here.

“Government executives tend to use their personal devices. They’re on Signal,” Eftychis Gregos Mourginakis, co-founder of Kibu, told Defense One during the symposium.

Mourginakis noted there is no guarantee the person on the other end is who they claim to be—or even human. “How do State Department officials trust that when they’re talking to their British compatriot, that it’s actually that person? How do you fill that gap? You can’t do it with voice. You can’t do it on video.”

Recent incidents involving AI agents impersonating humans have highlighted a growing threat that a current military official tracking adversary disinformation campaigns described as a significant problem for the military and intelligence communities.

“AI has made deception scalable. We’re no longer just fighting phishing emails; we’re fighting synthetic voices, cloned faces, and entire fake identities convincing enough to fool the people who know the real person best,” the official said.

A small group of U.S. special operators is currently testing Kibu, which employs encryption and verification features to confirm the identity of users—or AI agents. Beyond device-to-device encryption, the platform incorporates biometric authentication and, for military personnel, can integrate additional identification methods such as Common Access Card (CAC) requirements. The app also includes duress passcodes for situations where a user is compelled to unlock their device against their will.

The platform is not tethered to a device SIM card, phone number, or PIN. Organizations can host the app in their own cloud environments. “So if an organization basically signs an agreement with us, all of their end users on this platform are totally air-gapped,” Mourginakis said.

Even as the military works to keep adversary AI agents out of sensitive channels, it seeks to employ more AI under the doctrine of “meaningful human control.”

Mourginakis explained that Kibu allows users to build their own agents within the environment to communicate with unmanned systems while reporting back to a human operator.

“The identity can look like a human identity, but it can be sandboxed by the human users in that space. They need to biometrically prove it,” he said. “You can see we have a decision quorum. So if I need in this group to authorize certain things—say a certain number of these people need to approve these actions—here they can communicate about it, share the intelligence they need, and then commit their decision. Thumbs up. It’s approved.”

While military users face the most immediate need for such verification, Mourginakis said secure communication is a rising priority for civilians as well.

He identified a market shift away from products that monetize user data toward services prioritizing privacy.

“Now because of that and the rise of AI slop, the biggest premium service is going to be privacy, trust, security as a service.”

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