Displaying items by tag: Endtoend encryption

GUEST OPINION: Ransomware attacks continue to top the list of IT security concerns for many organisations. They can be disruptive, damaging, and very costly to resolve. Indeed, The State of Office 365 Backup survey highlighted that 67% of Australian businesses are concerned about data being backed up outside their geo residency and 69% are concerned about compliance with data privacy requirements.

The Facebook-owned messaging platform WhatsApp has added an extra layer of security to the app which offers its two billion users end-to-end encrypted messaging.

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.

In what is a clever marketing ploy for the Viber messaging, voice and video calling app, its CEO is making an appeal to Australians to use its services, with Viber stating it cut all business ties with Facebook back in June 2020.

Videoconferencing service Zoom is previewing end-to-end encryption on an opt-in basis for all users.

One of Australia's main newspapers, the Sydney Morning Herald, believes that technology companies can open "very small" encryption backdoors to enable government agencies to snoop on encrypted communications.

Zoom Video Communications, which has come under pressure during the coronavirus pandemic as various flaws in its software have been revealed, has announced that it will be acquiring secure messaging and file-sharing service Keybase for an undisclosed sum in a bid to improve its security.

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.

A number of well-respected security professionals have slammed the news agency Bloomberg for an op-ed it ran on Tuesday, claiming that WhatsApp's end-to-end encryption was a gimmick, after reports emerged that the app could be exploited by mobile spyware by merely calling the phone of a would-be victim.

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.

File sync and share solution company Nextcloud has added end-to-end encryption in version 13 of its product and also improved communication with Nextcloud Talk, a self-hosted, secure video and text chat solution.