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WhatsApp and Signal messages at risk of surveillance following EncroChat ruling, court hears | Computer Weekly
(www.computerweekly.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
The headline is a little misleading. The actual ruling is that police can obtain warrants to install surveillance malware on phones when they have evidence the owner is using it to communicate about crimes.
Could malware be installed without access to the physical phone? How would this be achieved. Is it with a backdoor from the phone manufacturer or infected somehow from the sim card service provider.
Well just recently researchers discovered a campaign installing backdoors on iPhones using a chain of several 0-day expoits or in this case using also 0-click exploits, where no interaction from a user is needed. However those attack chain are so advanced that practically normal law enforcement would never be able to do it. But theoretically yes some well equiped state actors are able to infect you without noticing. If you are really intrested to see how advanced these attack are search for "project triangulation" or watch the recording from last years chaos computer conference: https://media.ccc.de/v/37c3-11859-operation_triangulation_what_you_get_when_attack_iphones_of_researchers#t=373