Displaying items by tag: signal

After talking tough about cutting off functionality to users if they refuse to accept new changes to privacy from 15 May, WhatsApp has backed down and now says this will not be implemented.

An Israeli company that makes software for breaking into mobile devices including iPhones, has been publicly shamed by cryptographer Moxie Marlinspike, the creator of the Signal messaging app, who exposed poor security in the software which the company uses.

Leaked data from Facebook shows that the company's founder, Mark Zuckerberg, uses the end-to-end encrypted messaging app Signal, according to a report in the Indian news magazine, India Today.

End-to-end encrypted messaging platform WhatsApp has put off privacy changes it planned, after pushback from users who have been moving over to Signal and Telegram in droves.

The good folk who man the security agencies in Australia have cleverly pounced on admissions by Google and Facebook during a parliamentary inquiry, that they do not honour 20% of the requests for data disclosure, to push that well-worn barrow: end-to-end encryption will lead to Armageddon.

End-to-end encrypted messaging software Signal has incorporated an additional feature to make it possible for people to blur the faces in photos that are shared.

A developer of the messaging app Signal, that offers end-to-end encryption, has used the situation created by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic to warn Americans of the dangers to their privacy if legislators manage to put in place a new law known as the EARN IT Act that could make the use of end-to-end encryption unlawful.

The Australian Cyber Security Growth Network and the Australian Strategic Policy Institute are planning to issue a report that will apparently provide "high-level case studies" of what the government's encryption law means.

The Federal Government's encryption law does not seem like smart politics, but then nothing about it seems particularly smart, according to developer Joshua Lund who works for the project developing the encrypted messaging app Signal.

Secure messaging applications that offer end-to-end encryption — like Telegram, WhatsApp and Signal — can leak users' confidential information through session hijacking because they depend on the operating system they are running on to protect application state and user information.

ANALYSIS The Australian Government has left open the door for enforcement agencies to use specific cracks to gain access to encrypted communications on specific devices, given the language it has used in a draft of a new cyber law.

Last month, Google shut down a method whereby developers could use domain-fronting to avoid censorship on the Internet. Amazon Web Services has now followed suit.

The chief executive of WhatsApp, Jan Koum, says he is leaving the company that he and co-founder Brian Acton sold to Facebook in 2014 for US$19 billion.

Google has thrown a spanner into the works of developers who have been using domain-fronting in the Google App Engine to avoid Internet censorship by using Google's network.

Government functionaries in many countries appear to be obsessed with the idea that breaking encryption will lessen the quantum of crime – Australia's Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton is but the latest to voice the need for access to encrypted communications.

The head of the developers behind the Signal messenger app, that provides end-to-end encryption, is setting up a non-profit foundation to further the making of private communication accessible and ubiquitous.

Open Whisper Systems, the maker of the privacy-focused Signal messaging app, will be helping Microsoft to introduce a Private Conversations feature in Skype.

Exploit vendor Zerodium has added new categories to its payout list, with sums of half a million dollars (US) on offer for fully functioning weaponised exploits against Signal, WhatsApp, Telegram and other encrypted messaging apps.

In what is the latest attempt by a politician to argue against the use of encrypted apps by the general public, UK home secretary Amber Rudd has penned an article in which she says that "real people" do not need end-to-end encryption.

It is one thing to stand before a podium, as Moses did on the mount, and promulgate laws. It is quite another thing to put those laws into effect, especially when they cover encryption.