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Signal downloads spike in the US and Yemen amid government scandal | TechCrunch (techcrunch.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 8 points 2 years ago (5 children)

Dont use consumer apps for national security matters.

There was a vulnerability identified in Signal last year that caused the British to discontinue its use. I dont trust the british government but I am wary of what they are wary of.

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  • [–] 15 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    vulnerability

    My understanding is this has less to do with Signal than phones themselves. Signal messages are decrypted and stored on the phone itself, so a successful attack on the phone would allow access to the messages.

    This is completely fine for personal use since the average person isn't going to be a target, but for classified information, that's unacceptable. This isn't unique to any messenger, any app that stores data on the phone is open to it.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Yeah I was wondering what it could be myself, the notification text access was a thought. I didnt realise they were unencrypted on the phone. If I go to save a picture from a chat I am prompted with the this is going outside the sandbox dialogue.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago

    They do seem to have experimental support for local encryption, but I don't think it's quite the win people will assume it is, since an attacker could conceivably pull the key from memory when you access Signal. A regular user isn't likely to be targeted by an attack that would retrieve the encrypted messages, and a state-level attacker can work around the encryption.

    It's a hard problem to solve, and the best answer is to make sure you use hardened devices and ideally not discuss sensitive information on a handheld device in the first place.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    At least it was Americans talking on an american platform. I wouldn't be surprised if we had french Europeans leaders having occasionally this kind of discussions on Microsoft Teams or some Google chat.

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