ewhac (Slashdot reader #5,844) writes: Friday the hardware review site Gamers Nexus filed a YouTube video report alleging some serious claims: that PC component manufacturer MSI left their internal warranty and RMA processing web site accessible to the open Internet, with no authentication. Virtually the entire history of MSI warranty claims going back to at least 2017 were searchable and accessible for the browsing, including customer names, email addresses, phone numbers, and serial numbers of MSI devices.

This event follows closely on the heels of a video report just a few days earlier alleging PC component manufacturer Zotac left their warranty/RMA and B2B records server open to indexing by Google.

Gamers Nexus posted their reports after informing Zotac and MSI of their open servers and verifying they were no longer accessible. However, the data from MSI's server could have been fully scraped at this point, giving scammers a gold mine of data permitting them to impersonate MSI personnel and defraud customers. Anyone who's filed a warranty or RMA claim with MSI in the past seven years should exercise caution when receiving unsolicited emails or phone calls purporting to be from MSI.

"Signal is finally tightening its desktop client's security," reports BleepingComputer — by changing the way it stores plain text encryption keys for the SQLite database where users' messages are stored: When BleepingComputer contacted Signal about the flaw in 2018, we never received a response. Instead, a Signal Support Manager responded to a user's concerns in the Signal forum, stating that the security of its database was never something it claimed to provide. "The database key was never intended to be a secret. At-rest encryption is not something that Signal Desktop is currently trying to provide or has ever claimed to provide," responded the Signal employee...

[L]ast week, mobile security researchers Talal Haj Bakry and Tommy Mysk of Mysk Inc warned on X not to use Signal Desktop because of the same security weakness we reported on in 2018... In April, an independent developer, Tom Plant, created a request to merge code that uses Electron's SafeStorage API "...to opportunistically encrypt the key with platform APIs like DPAPI on Windows and Keychain on macOS," Plant explained in the merge request... When used, encryption keys are generated and stored using an operating system's cryptography system and secure key stores. For example, on Macs, the encryption key would be stored in the Keychain, and on Linux, it would use the windows manager's secret store, such as kwallet, kwallet5, kwallet6, and gnome-libsecret... While the solution would provide additional security for all Signal desktop users, the request lay dormant until last week's X drama.

Two days ago, a Signal developer finally replied that they implemented support for Electron's safeStorage, which would be available soon in an upcoming Beta version. While the new safeStorage implementation is tested, Signal also included a fallback mechanism that allows the program to decrypt the database using the legacy database decryption key...

Signal says that the legacy key will be removed once the new feature is tested.
"To be fair to Signal, encrypting local databases without a user-supplied password is a problem for all applications..." the article acknowledges.

"However, as a company that prides itself on its security and privacy, it was strange that the organization dismissed the issue and did not attempt to provide a solution..."

TechSpot writes: Users of the Linksys Velop Pro 6E and 7 mesh routers should change their passwords and Wi-Fi network names through an external web browser. The two models transmit critical information to outside servers in an insecure manner upon initial installation. New patches have emerged since the issue was discovered, but Linksys hasn't publicly responded to the matter, and it is unclear if the latest firmware leaves sensitive data exposed to interception.
The issue was discovered by Testaankoop, the Belgian equivalent of the Consumers' Association. And they warned Linksys back in November, according to the tech news site Stack Diary. (The practice could leave passwords and other information vulnerable to Man-in-the-Middle attacks.) Testaankoop suspects the security issue might stem from third-party software used in the Linksys firmware. However, they emphasize that this does not excuse the vulnerability.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the news.

Top Eurocops are appealing for help from lawmakers to undermine a privacy-enhancing technology (PET) they say is hampering criminal investigations -- and it's not end-to-end encryption this time. Not exactly. From a report: Europol published a position paper today highlighting its concerns around SMS home routing -- the technology that allows telcos to continue offering their services when customers visit another country. Most modern mobile phone users are tied to a network with roaming arrangements in other countries. EE customers in the UK will connect to either Telefonica or Xfera when they land in Spain, or T-Mobile in Croatia, for example.

While this usually provides a fairly smooth service for most roamers, Europol is now saying something needs to be done about the PETs that are often enabled in these home routing setups. According to the cops, they pointed out that when roaming, a suspect in a criminal case who's using a SIM from another country will have all of their mobile communications processed through their home network. If a crime is committed by a Brit in Germany, for example, then German police couldn't issue a request for unencrypted data as they could with a domestic operator such as Deutsche Telekom.

MattSparkes writes: Secret international discussions have resulted in governments across the world imposing identical export controls on quantum computers, while refusing to disclose the scientific rationale behind the regulations. Although quantum computers theoretically have the potential to threaten national security by breaking encryption techniques, even the most advanced quantum computers currently in public existence are too small and too error-prone to achieve this, rendering the bans seemingly pointless.

The UK is one of the countries that has prohibited the export of quantum computers with 34 or more quantum bits, or qubits, and error rates below a certain threshold. The intention seems to be to restrict machines of a certain capability, but the UK government hasn't explicitly said this. A New Scientist freedom of information request for a rationale behind these numbers was turned down on the grounds of national security. France has also introduced export controls with the same specifications on qubit numbers and error rates, as has Spain and the Netherlands. Identical limits across European states might point to a European Union regulation, but that isn't the case. A European Commission spokesperson told New Scientist that EU members are free to adopt national measures, rather than bloc-wide ones, for export restrictions.

New Scientist reached out to dozens of nations to ask what the scientific basis for these matching legislative bans on quantum computer exports was, but was told it was kept secret to protect national security.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Over the weekend, a clip from a recent interview with Telegram's founder Pavel Durov went semi-viral on X (previously Twitter). In the video, Durov tells right-wing personality Tucker Carlson that he is the only product manager at the company, and that he only employs "about 30 engineers." Security experts say that while Durov was bragging about his Dubai-based company being "super efficient," what he said was actually a red flag for users.

"Without end-to-end encryption, huge numbers of vulnerable targets, and servers located in the UAE? Seems like that would be a security nightmare," Matthew Green, a cryptography expert at Johns Hopkins University, told TechCrunch. (Telegram spokesperson Remi Vaughn disputed this, saying it has no data centers in the UAE.) Green was referring to the fact that -- by default -- chats on Telegram are not end-to-end encrypted like they are on Signal or WhatsApp. A Telegram user has to start a "Secret Chat" to switch on end-to-end encryption, making the messages unreadable to Telegram or anyone other than the intended recipient.

Also, over the years, many people have cast doubt over the quality of Telegram's encryption, given that the company uses its own proprietary encryption algorithm, created by Durov's brother, as he said in an extended version of the Carlson interview. Eva Galperin, the director of cybersecurity at the Electronic Frontier Foundation and a longtime expert in the security of at-risk users, said that it's important to remember that Telegram, unlike Signal, is a lot more than just a messaging app.

Automated license plate readers "pose risks to public safety," argues the EFF, "that may outweigh the crimes they are attempting to address in the first place." When law enforcement uses automated license plate readers (ALPRs) to document the comings and goings of every driver on the road, regardless of a nexus to a crime, it results in gargantuan databases of sensitive information, and few agencies are equipped, staffed, or trained to harden their systems against quickly evolving cybersecurity threats. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), a component of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, released an advisory last week that should be a wake up call to the thousands of local government agencies around the country that use ALPRs to surveil the travel patterns of their residents by scanning their license plates and "fingerprinting" their vehicles. The bulletin outlines seven vulnerabilities in Motorola Solutions' Vigilant ALPRs, including missing encryption and insufficiently protected credentials...

Unlike location data a person shares with, say, GPS-based navigation app Waze, ALPRs collect and store this information without consent and there is very little a person can do to have this information purged from these systems... Because drivers don't have control over ALPR data, the onus for protecting the data lies with the police and sheriffs who operate the surveillance and the vendors that provide the technology. It's a general tenet of cybersecurity that you should not collect and retain more personal data than you are capable of protecting. Perhaps ironically, a Motorola Solutions cybersecurity specialist wrote an article in Police Chief magazine this month that public safety agencies "are often challenged when it comes to recruiting and retaining experienced cybersecurity personnel," even though "the potential for harm from external factors is substantial." That partially explains why, more than 125 law enforcement agencies reported a data breach or cyberattacks between 2012 and 2020, according to research by former EFF intern Madison Vialpando. The Motorola Solutions article claims that ransomware attacks "targeting U.S. public safety organizations increased by 142 percent" in 2023.

Yet, the temptation to "collect it all" continues to overshadow the responsibility to "protect it all." What makes the latest CISA disclosure even more outrageous is it is at least the third time in the last decade that major security vulnerabilities have been found in ALPRs... If there's one positive thing we can say about the latest Vigilant vulnerability disclosures, it's that for once a government agency identified and reported the vulnerabilities before they could do damage... The Michigan Cyber Command center found a total of seven vulnerabilities in Vigilant devices; two of which were medium severity and 5 of which were high severity vulnerabilities...

But a data breach isn't the only way that ALPR data can be leaked or abused. In 2022, an officer in the Kechi (Kansas) Police Department accessed ALPR data shared with his department by the Wichita Police Department to stalk his wife.
The article concludes that public safety agencies should "collect only the data they need for actual criminal investigations.

"They must never store more data than they adequately protect within their limited resources-or they must keep the public safe from data breaches by not collecting the data at all."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: A hacker is advertising customer data allegedly stolen from the Australia-based live events and ticketing company TEG on a well-known hacking forum. On Thursday, a hacker put up for sale the alleged stolen data from TEG, claiming to have information of 30 million users, including the full name, gender, date of birth, username, hashed passwords, and email addresses. In late May, TEG-owned ticketing company Ticketek disclosed a data breach affecting Australian customers' data, "which is stored in a cloud-based platform, hosted by a reputable, global third party supplier."

The company said that "no Ticketek customer account has been compromised," thanks to the encryption methods used to store their passwords. TEG conceded, however, that "customer names, dates of birth and email addresses may have been impacted" -- data that would line up with that advertised on the hacking forum. The hacker included a sample of the alleged stolen data in their post. TechCrunch confirmed that at least some of the data published on the forum appears legitimate by attempting to sign up for new accounts using the published email addresses. In a number of cases, Ticketek's website gave an error, suggesting the email addresses are already in use. There's evidence that the company's "cloud-based platform" provider is Snowflake, "which has been at the center of a recent series of data thefts affecting several of its customers, including Ticketmaster, Santander Bank, and others," notes TechCrunch.

"A now-deleted post on Snowflake's website from January 2023 was titled: 'TEG Personalizes Live Entertainment Experiences with Snowflake.' In 2022, consulting company Altis published a case study (PDF) detailing how the company, working with TEG, 'built a modern data platform for ingesting streaming data into Snowflake.'"

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: At SUSECon in Berlin, SUSE, a global Linux and cloud-native software leader, announced significant enhancements across its entire Linux distribution family. These new capabilities focus on providing faster time-to-value and reduced operational costs, emphasizing the importance of choice in today's complex IT landscape. SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 15 Service Pack (SP) 6 is at the heart of these upgrades. This update future-proofs IT workloads with a new Long Term Service (LTS) Pack Support Core. How long is long-term? Would you believe 19 years? This gives SLES the longest-term support period in the enterprise Linux market. Even Ubuntu, for which Canonical recently extended its LTS to 12 years, doesn't come close.

You may ask yourself, "Why 19 years?" SUSE General Manager of Business Critical Linux (BCL) Rick Spencer, explained in an interview that the reason is that on 03:14:08 Greenwich Mean Time (GMT, aka Coordinated Universal Time) Tuesday, January 19, 2038, we reach the end of computing time. Well, not really, but Linux, and all the other Unix-based operating systems, including some versions of MacOS, reach what's called the Epoch. That's when the time-keeping code in 32-bit Unix-based operating systems reaches the end of the seconds it's been counting since the beginning of time -- 00:00:00 GMT on January 1, 1970, as far as Linux and Unix systems are concerned -- and resets to zero. Just like the Y2K bug, that means that all unpatched 32-bit operating systems and software will have fits. The Linux kernel itself had the problem fixed in 2020's Linux 5.6 kernel, but many other programs haven't dealt with it. Until then, though, if you're still running SLES 15 SP6, you'll be covered. I strongly suggest upgrading before then, but if you want to stick with that distro to the bitter end, you can. The new SLES also boasts enhanced security features like confidential computing support with encryption in memory, utilizing Intel TDX and AMD SEV processors, along with remote attestation via SUSE Manager. Additionally, SLES for SAP Applications 15 SP6 offers a secure and reliable platform for running mission-critical SAP workloads, incorporating innovations from Trento to help system administrators avoid infrastructure issues.

European Union officials have delayed talks over proposed legislation that could lead to messaging services having to scan photos and links to detect possible child sexual abuse material (CSAM). From a report: Were the proposal to become law, it may require the likes of WhatsApp, Messenger and Signal to scan all images that users upload -- which would essentially force them to break encryption. For the measure to pass, it would need to have the backing of at least 15 of the member states representing at least 65 percent of the bloc's entire population. However, countries including Germany, Austria, Poland, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic were expected to abstain from the vote or oppose the plan due to cybersecurity and privacy concerns, Politico reports. If EU members come to an agreement on a joint position, they'll have to hash out a final version of the law with the European Commission and European Parliament.

The European Union is getting closer to passing new rules that would mandate the bulk scanning of digital messages -- including encrypted ones. On Thursday, EU governments will adopt a position on the proposed legislation, which is aimed at detecting child sexual abuse material (CSAM). The vote will determine whether the proposal has enough support to move forward in the EU's law-making process. From a report: The law, first introduced in 2022, would implement an "upload moderation" system that scans all your digital messages, including shared images, videos, and links. Each service required to install this "vetted" monitoring technology must also ask permission to scan your messages. If you don't agree, you won't be able to share images or URLs.

As if this doesn't seem wild enough, the proposed legislation appears to endorse and reject end-to-end encryption at the same time. At first, it highlights how end-to-end encryption "is a necessary means of protecting fundamental rights" but then goes on to say that encrypted messaging services could "inadvertently become secure zones where child sexual abuse material can be shared or disseminated."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from MacRumors: iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia feature a new, dedicated Passwords app for faster access to important credentials. The Passwords app replaces iCloud Keychain, which is currently only accessible via a menu in Settings. Now, passwords are available directly via a standalone app for markedly quicker access, bringing it more in line with rival services. The Passwords app consolidates various credentials, including passwords, passkeys, and Wi-Fi passwords, into a single, easily accessible location. Users can filter and sort their accounts based on various criteria, such as recently created accounts, credential type, or membership in shared groups.

Passwords is also compatible with Windows via the iCloud for Windows app, extending its utility to users who operate across different platforms. The developer beta versions of iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia are available today with official release to the public scheduled for the fall, providing an early look at the Passwords app.

Slashdot reader storagedude shared this report from The Cyber Express: A security researcher discovered an exploitable timing leak in the Kyber key encapsulation mechanism (KEM) that's in the process of being adopted by NIST as a post-quantum cryptographic standard. Antoon Purnal of PQShield detailed his findings in a blog post and on social media, and noted that the problem has been fixed with the help of the Kyber team. The issue was found in the reference implementation of the Module-Lattice-Based Key-Encapsulation Mechanism (ML-KEM) that's in the process of being adopted as a NIST post-quantum key encapsulation standard. "A key part of implementation security is resistance against side-channel attacks, which exploit the physical side-effects of cryptographic computations to infer sensitive information," Purnal wrote.

To secure against side-channel attacks, cryptographic algorithms must be implemented in a way so that "no attacker-observable effect of their execution depends on the secrets they process," he wrote. In the ML-KEM reference implementation, "we're concerned with a particular side channel that's observable in almost all cryptographic deployment scenarios: time." The vulnerability can occur when a compiler optimizes the code, in the process silently undoing "measures taken by the skilled implementer." In Purnal's analysis, the Clang compiler was found to emit a vulnerable secret-dependent branch in the poly_frommsg function of the ML-KEM reference code needed in both key encapsulation and decapsulation, corresponding to the expand_secure implementation.
While the reference implementation was patched, "It's important to note that this does not rule out the possibility that other libraries, which are based on the reference implementation but do not use the poly_frommsg function verbatim, may be vulnerable — either now or in the future," Purnal wrote.

Purnal also published a proof-of-concept demo on GitHub. "On an Intel Core i7-13700H, it takes between 5-10 minutes to leak the entire ML-KEM 512 secret key using end-to-end decapsulation timing measurements."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from BleepingComputer: The FBI urges past victims of LockBit ransomware attacks to come forward after revealing that it has obtained over 7,000 LockBit decryption keys that they can use to recover encrypted data for free. FBI Cyber Division Assistant Director Bryan Vorndran announced this on Wednesday at the 2024 Boston Conference on Cyber Security. "From our ongoing disruption of LockBit, we now have over 7,000 decryption keys and can help victims reclaim their data and get back online," the FBI Cyber Lead said in a keynote. "We are reaching out to known LockBit victims and encouraging anyone who suspects they were a victim to visit our Internet Crime Complaint Center at ic3.gov."

This call to action comes after law enforcement took down LockBit's infrastructure in February 2024 in an international operation dubbed "Operation Cronos." At the time, police seized 34 servers containing over 2,500 decryption keys, which helped create a free LockBit 3.0 Black Ransomware decryptor. After analyzing the seized data, the U.K.'s National Crime Agency and the U.S. Justice Department estimate the gang and its affiliates have raked in up to $1 billion in ransoms following 7,000 attacks targeting organizations worldwide between June 2022 and February 2024. However, despite law enforcement efforts to shut down its operations, LockBit is still active and has since switched to new servers and dark web domains. After disrupting LockBit in February, the U.S. State Department said it is offering a reward of up to $15 million for information leading to the identification or location of the leaders of the ransomware group.

In a column at Windows Central, a blog that focuses on Microsoft news, senior editor Zac Bowden discusses the backlash against Windows Recall, a new AI feature in Microsoft's Copilot+ PCs. While the feature is impressive, allowing users to search their entire Windows history, many are concerned about privacy and security. Bowden argues that Microsoft's history of questionable practices, such as ads and bloatware, has eroded user trust, making people skeptical of Recall's intentions. Additionally, the reported lack of encryption for Recall's data raises concerns about third-party access. Bowden argues that Microsoft could have averted the situation by testing the feature openly to address these issues early on and build trust with users. He adds: Users are describing the feature as literal spyware or malware, and droves of people are proclaiming they will proudly switch to Linux or Mac in the wake of it. Microsoft simply doesn't enjoy the same benefit of the doubt that other tech giants like Apple may have.

Had Apple announced a feature like Recall, there would have been much less backlash, as Apple has done a great job building loyalty and trust with its users, prioritizing polished software experiences, and positioning privacy as a high-level concern for the company.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: A popular GitHub repo and over 120 forks containing Switch emulation tutorials have been targeted by Nintendo. While most forks are now disabled, the main repository has managed to survive after being given the opportunity to put things right. Whether Nintendo appreciated the irony is unclear, but it appears that use of encoding as a protection measure to obfuscate links, was no match for the video game company's circumvention skills. [...] The Switch Emulators Guide was presented in the context of piracy, something made clear by a note on the main page of the original repo which stated that the tutorial was made, in part, for use on the /r/NewYuzuPiracy subreddit. Since the actions of Yuzu and its eventual demise are part of the unwritten framework for similar takedowns, that sets the tone (although not the legal basis) in favor of takedown.

When asked to provide a description and URL pointing to the copyrighted content allegedly infringed by the repos, Nintendo states that the works are the 'Nintendo Switch firmware" and various games protected by technological protection measures (TPM) which prevent users from unlawfully copying and playing pirated games. The notice states the repos 'provide access' to keys that enable circumvention of its technical measures. "The reported repositories offer and provide access to unauthorized copies of cryptographic keys that are used to circumvent Nintendo's Technological Measures and infringe Nintendo's intellectual property rights. Specifically, the reported repositories provide to users unauthorized copies of cryptographic keys (prod.keys) extracted from the Nintendo Switch firmware," Nintendo writes.

"The prod.keys allow users to bypass Nintendo's Technological Measures for digital games; specifically, prod.keys allow users to decrypt and play Nintendo Switch games in unauthorized ways. Distribution of keys without the copyright owner's authorization is a violation of Section 1201 of the DMCA." Nintendo further notes that unauthorized distribution of prod.keys "facilitates copyright infringement by permitting users to play pirated versions of Nintendo's copyright-protected game software on systems without the Nintendo Technological Measures or systems on which Nintendo's Technological Measures have been disabled." Since the prod.keys are extracted from the Nintendo Switch firmware, which is also protected by copyright, distribution amounts to "infringement of Nintendo Switch firmware itself."

Given that the repo's stated purpose was to provide information on how to circumvent Nintendo's technical protection measures, it's fairly ironic that it appears to have used technical measures itself to hinder detection. "The reported repositories attempt to evade detection of their illegal activities by providing access to prod.keys and unauthorized copies of Nintendo's firmware and video games via encoded links that direct users to third-party websites to download the infringing content," Nintendo explains in its notice. "The repositories provide strings of letters and numbers and then instruct users to 'use [private] to decode the lines of strings given here to get an actual link.' The decoded links take users to sites where they can access the prod.keys and unauthorized copies of Nintendo's copyright-protected material." The image below shows the encoded links (partially redacted) that allegedly link to the content in question on third-party sites. To hide their nature, regular URLs are encoded using Base64, a binary-to-text encoding scheme that transforms them into a sequence of characters. Those characters can be decoded to reveal the original URL using online tools.

How will Apple protect user data while their requests are being processed by AI in applications like Siri?

Long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shared this report from Apple Insider: According to sources of The Information [four different former Apple employees who worked on the project], Apple intends to process data from AI applications inside a virtual black box.

The concept, known as "Apple Chips in Data Centers" internally, would involve only Apple's hardware being used to perform AI processing in the cloud. The idea is that it will control both the hardware and software on its servers, enabling it to design more secure systems. While on-device AI processing is highly private, the initiative could make cloud processing for Apple customers to be similarly secure... By taking control over how data is processed in the cloud, it would make it easier for Apple to implement processes to make a breach much harder to actually happen.

Furthermore, the black box approach would also prevent Apple itself from being able to see the data. As a byproduct, this means it would also be difficult for Apple to hand over any personal data from government or law enforcement data requests.
Processed data from the servers would be stored in Apple's "Secure Enclave" (where the iPhone stores biometric data, encryption keys and passwords), according to the article.

"Doing so means the data can't be seen by other elements of the system, nor Apple itself."

An anonymous reader quotes an op-ed from The Globe and Mail, written by Kate Robertson and Ron Deibert. Robertson is a senior research associate and Deibert is director at the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab. From the piece: A federal cybersecurity bill, slated to advance through Parliament soon, contains secretive, encryption-breaking powers that the government has been loath to talk about. And they threaten the online security of everyone in Canada. Bill C-26 empowers government officials to secretly order telecommunications companies to install backdoors inside encrypted elements in Canada's networks. This could include requiring telcos to alter the 5G encryption standards that protect mobile communications to facilitate government surveillance. The government's decision to push the proposed law forward without amending it to remove this encryption-breaking capability has set off alarm bells that these new powers are a feature, not a bug.

There are already many insecurities in today's networks, reaching down to the infrastructure layers of communication technology. The Signalling System No. 7, developed in 1975 to route phone calls, has become a major source of insecurity for cellphones. In 2017, the CBC demonstrated how hackers only needed a Canadian MP's cell number to intercept his movements, text messages and phone calls. Little has changed since: A 2023 Citizen Lab report details pervasive vulnerabilities at the heart of the world's mobile networks. So it makes no sense that the Canadian government would itself seek the ability to create more holes, rather than patching them. Yet it is pushing for potential new powers that would infect next-generation cybersecurity tools with old diseases.

It's not as if the government wasn't warned. Citizen Lab researchers presented the 2023 report's findings in parliamentary hearings on Bill C-26, and leaders and experts in civil society and in Canada's telecommunications industry warned that the bill must be narrowed to prevent its broad powers to compel technical changes from being used to compromise the "confidentiality, integrity, or availability" of telecommunication services. And yet, while government MPs maintained that their intent is not to expand surveillance capabilities, MPs pushed the bill out of committee without this critical amendment last month. In doing so, the government has set itself up to be the sole arbiter of when, and on what conditions, Canadians deserve security for their most confidential communications -- personal, business, religious, or otherwise. The new powers would only make people in Canada more vulnerable to malicious threats to the privacy and security of all network users, including Canada's most senior officials. [...] "Now, more than ever, there is no such thing as a safe backdoor," the authors write in closing. "A shortcut that provides a narrow advantage for the few at the expense of us all is no way to secure our complex digital ecosystem."

"Against this threat landscape, a pivot is crucial. Canada needs cybersecurity laws that explicitly recognize that uncompromised encryption is the backbone of cybersecurity, and it must be mandated and protected by all means possible."

Messaging app Signal's president Meredith Whittaker criticized rival Telegram's security on Friday, saying Telegram founder Pavel Durov is "full of s---" in his claims about Signal. "Telegram is a social media platform, it's not encrypted, it's the least secure of messaging and social media services out there," Whittaker told TechCrunch in an interview. The comments come amid a war of words between Whittaker, Durov and Twitter owner Elon Musk over the security of their respective platforms. Whittaker said Durov's amplification of claims questioning Signal's security was "incredibly reckless" and "actually harms real people."

"Play your games, but don't take them into my court," Whittaker said, accusing Durov of prioritizing being "followed by a professional photographer" over getting facts right about Signal's encryption. Signal uses end-to-end encryption by default, while Telegram only offers it for "secret chats." Whittaker said many in Ukraine and Russia use Signal for "actual serious communications" while relying on Telegram's less-secure social media features. She said the "jury is in" on the platforms' comparative security and that Signal's open source code allows experts to validate its privacy claims, which have the trust of the security community.

WhatsApp's security team warned that despite the app's encryption, users are vulnerable to government surveillance through traffic analysis, according to an internal threat assessment obtained by The Intercept. The document suggests that governments can monitor when and where encrypted communications occur, potentially allowing powerful inferences about who is conversing with whom. The report adds: Even though the contents of WhatsApp communications are unreadable, the assessment shows how governments can use their access to internet infrastructure to monitor when and where encrypted communications are occurring, like observing a mail carrier ferrying a sealed envelope. This view into national internet traffic is enough to make powerful inferences about which individuals are conversing with each other, even if the subjects of their conversations remain a mystery. "Even assuming WhatsApp's encryption is unbreakable," the assessment reads, "ongoing 'collect and correlate' attacks would still break our intended privacy model."

The WhatsApp threat assessment does not describe specific instances in which it knows this method has been deployed by state actors. But it cites extensive reporting by the New York Times and Amnesty International showing how countries around the world spy on dissident encrypted chat app usage, including WhatsApp, using the very same techniques. As war has grown increasingly computerized, metadata -- information about the who, when, and where of conversations -- has come to hold immense value to intelligence, military, and police agencies around the world. "We kill people based on metadata," former National Security Agency chief Michael Hayden once infamously quipped. Meta said "WhatsApp has no backdoors and we have no evidence of vulnerabilities in how WhatsApp works." Though the assessment describes the "vulnerabilities" as "ongoing," and specifically mentions WhatsApp 17 times, a Meta spokesperson said the document is "not a reflection of a vulnerability in WhatsApp," only "theoretical," and not unique to WhatsApp.