Totally expected, but still good to hear: Onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2023, Meredith Whittaker, the president of the Signal Foundation, which maintains the nonprofit Signal messaging app, reaffirmed that Signal would leave the U.K. if the country’s recently passed Online Safety Bill forced Signal to build “backdoors” into its end-to-end encryption. “We would leave the … Read More “Signal Will Leave the UK Rather Than Add a Backdoor” »
Category: signal
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In an open letter, seven secure messaging apps—including Signal and WhatsApp—point out that the UK’s Online Safety Bill could destroy end-to-end encryption: As currently drafted, the Bill could break end-to-end encryption,opening the door to routine, general and indiscriminate surveillance of personal messages of friends, family members, employees, executives, journalists, human rights activists and even politicians … Read More “UK Threatens End-to-End Encryption” »
Long and interesting interview with Signal’s new president, Meredith Whittaker: WhatsApp uses the Signal encryption protocol to provide encryption for its messages. That was absolutely a visionary choice that Brian and his team led back in the day - and big props to them for doing that. But you can’t just look at that and … Read More “Interview with Signal’s New President” »
Moxie Marlinspike has an intriguing blog post about Cellebrite, a tool used by police and others to break into smartphones. Moxie got his hands on one of the devices, which seems to be a pair of Windows software packages and a whole lot of connecting cables. According to Moxie, the software is riddled with vulnerabilities. … Read More “Security Vulnerabilities in Cellebrite” »
According to Wired, Signal is adding support for the cryptocurrency MobileCoin, “a form of digital cash designed to work efficiently on mobile devices while protecting users’ privacy and even their anonymity.” Moxie Marlinspike, the creator of Signal and CEO of the nonprofit that runs it, describes the new payments feature as an attempt to extend … Read More “Signal Adds Cryptocurrency Support” »
Internet censors have a new strategy in their bid to block applications and websites: pressuring the large cloud providers that host them. These providers have concerns that are much broader than the targets of censorship efforts, so they have the choice of either standing up to the censors or capitulating in order to maximize their … Read More “Russian Censorship of Telegram” »
A new PGP vulnerability was announced today. Basically, the vulnerability makes use of the fact that modern e-mail programs allow for embedded HTML objects. Essentially, if an attacker can intercept and modify a message in transit, he can insert code that sends the plaintext in a URL to a remote website. Very clever. The EFAIL … Read More “Details on a New PGP Vulnerability” »
A new vulnerability in WhatsApp has been discovered: …the researchers unearthed far more significant gaps in WhatsApp’s security: They say that anyone who controls WhatsApp’s servers could effortlessly insert new people into an otherwise private group, even without the permission of the administrator who ostensibly controls access to that conversation. Matthew Green has a good … Read More “WhatsApp Vulnerability” »
This should come as no surprise: Alas, our findings suggest that secure communications haven’t yet attracted mass adoption among journalists. We looked at 2,515 Washington journalists with permanent credentials to cover Congress, and we found only 2.5 percent of them solicit end-to-end encrypted communication via their Twitter bios. That’s just 62 out of all the … Read More “Journalists Generally Do Not Use Secure Communication” »
The US Senate just approved Signal for staff use. Signal is a secure messaging app with no backdoor, and no large corporate owner who can be pressured to install a backdoor. Susan Landau comments. Maybe I’m being optimistic, but I think we just won the Crypto War. A very important part of the US government … Read More “The US Senate Is Using Signal” »