Encryption

At the height of the great Snowden whistleblowing phase of history, highly secure and encrypted messaging services became en vogue. While some of that has died down, a notable few like Signal remain. Developed by Open Whisper Systems, which also developers the Signal protocol now used by Whatsapp for encryption, the Signal app started out as a simple, text-based chat app. Now it is on the cusp of its next evolution, adding that oh so popular video chatting capability, though still in beta format.

Continue Reading

Back in 2013, when Edward Snowden blew the whistle on the US government's mass surveillance programs, it was discovered that his preferred email provider was the encrypted service called Lavabit. As the government then tried to get its hands on the former NSA contractor, the federal authorities demanded Lavabit turn over its SSL encryption key. Instead, founder Ladar Levison shut the entire service down, as cooperating meant giving the government access to the private data of all of its 410,000 users.

Continue Reading

Signal, the encrypted messaging app endorsed by whistleblower Edward Snowden, just received rather significant update. No, we’re not referring to the new stickers and doodling functionality. Those are just a front for the real meat of the update. In almost a similar fashion, Signal now uses a “front”, specifically a domain front utilizing Google.com, in order to circumvent current and future government censorship that would block an app that is reported to be in popular use among activists, advocates, and even dissidents.

Continue Reading

Donald Trump's impending presidency and Pompeo pick for CIA has sent downloads of secure encryption chat apps skyrocketing. According to the makers of the encrypted messaging app Signal, they've had a 400 percent growth increase since election day this month. Moxie Marlinspike, co-founder of OWS, makers of Signal, they've "never really seen any single event that's resulted in this kind of sustained, day-over-day interest." According to Marlinspike, this may be because of fears that Trump's impending control of "the least accountable surveillance apparatus in the history of the world."

Continue Reading

One of the biggest criticisms of Google’s open mobile platform is security. For some, especially those looking from the iOS camp, Android’s security framework is a joke. That’s not to say that Google hasn’t been working on improving the situation significantly. Especially in its first ever “by Google” smartphone, the Pixel. Now Google briefly explains some of the added security measures implemented for the device, specifically on the rather contentious topic of encryption.

Continue Reading

Earlier this year, Facebook began testing end-to-end encryption in Messenger through a new feature called Secret Conversations. Initially the feature was only available to a select number of users, but that's been changing over the past few weeks, with Facebook rolling Secret Conversations out to every Messenger user - all 900 million of them.

Continue Reading

Security forensics company Elcomsoft revealed last week that encrypted iOS backups created in iTunes have been made far less secure with the recent release of iOS 10. While an unintentional flaw, the new password protected backups offer an "alternative password verification mechanism" that allows them to fall victim to brute force hacks much more quickly and easily than with previous iOS versions. Fortunately Apple acknowledged the issue, and says a fix is on the way with "an upcoming security update."

Continue Reading

Google aims to step up its campaign against an unencrypted internet by alerting users to any websites that still aren't using HTTPS connections. The search giant has said that when the next version of Chrome launches, it will begin displaying a new warning on any login pages that aren't encrypted, or in other words using HTTP. This is scheduled to start in January 2017 with the rollout of Chrome 56.

Continue Reading

Facebook's acquisition of WhatsApp in early 2014 raised all sorts of red flags for security and privacy interest groups. Facebook, then and to some extent now, isn't exactly the epitome of those two values. Over time, WhatsApp has tried to assuage fears by implementing features such as end-to-end encryption. Apparently, that may be futile after all. Forensic scientist Jonathan Zdziarski revealed that, while the app does encrypt the messages it stores, it doesn't actually completely delete them and its backups still leave users open to spying or law enforcement.

Continue Reading

One of the wonderful things about end-to-end encryption in messaging apps is, as long as it's implemented correctly, nobody but you or the person you're chatting with should be able to see those messages. Unfortunately for WhatsApp, judges in Brazil don't seem to understand how that works. Yes, Brazil's at it again, as the office of Judge Daniela Barbosa Assunção de Souza in Rio De Janerio has ordered five carriers to block WhatsApp until it turns over data associated with a criminal case.

Continue Reading

Back at the end of May, we heard that Facebook may be rolling out encryption to Messenger sometime this summer. It looks like that day has arrived, as Facebook has announced that it will be testing end-to-end encryption in Messenger through a new feature called Secret Conversations. Not everyone will have access to Secret Conversations at first, but assuming the tests go well and Facebook doesn't need to make any big changes to the feature, it shouldn't be long before it rolls out to everyone.

Continue Reading

Google's Android platform has had its problems with security in the best, but a number of encryption features have been built into the software, as well as hardware, in recent years, significantly improving the situation. Unfortunately things are still far from perfect, as security researcher Gal Beniamini has discovered a vulnerability that leaves the Full Disk Encryption feature at risk to brute force attacks.

Continue Reading