U.S. officials urge Americans to use encrypted apps amid unprecedented cyberattack
U.S. officials urge Americans to use encrypted apps amid unprecedented cyberattack
Officials from the FBI and CISA said it was impossible to predict when the telecommunications companies would be fully safe from interlopers.
It's probably also good practice to assume that not all encrypted apps are created equal, too. Google's RCS messaging, for example, says "end-to-end encrypted", which sounds like it would be a direct and equal competitor to something like Signal. But Google regularly makes money off of your personal data. It does not behoove a company like Google to protect your data.
Start assuming every corporation is evil. At worst you lose some time getting educated on options.
115Everybodies aunt at thanksgiving:
"I should be fine. I only trust the facebook with my information. Oh, did I tell you? We have 33 more cousins we didn't know about. I found out on 23andme.com. All of them want to borrow money."
66From RFC 2804:
- The IETF believes that adding a requirement for wiretapping will make affected protocol designs considerably more complex. Experience has shown that complexity almost inevitably jeopardizes the security of communications even when it is not being tapped by any legal means; there are also obvious risks raised by having to protect the access to the wiretap. This is in conflict with the goal of freedom from security loopholes.
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc2804/
This was written in 2000 in response to US government requests to add backdoors to voice-over-IP (VoIP) standards.
It was recognized 25 years ago that having tapping capabilities is fundamentally insecure.
48On January 20th: The cyberattack is coming from inside the house!
Dumbfuck and his cronies now have access to PRISM and ECHELON. Again.
38What i read [and corrected] from the article :
"The hacking
campaign[group], nicknamed [ by Microsoft ] Salt Typhoonby Microsoft,
[ this actual campaign of attacks ] is one of the largest intelligence compromises in U.S. history, and not yet fully remediated. Officials in a press call Tuesday [ 2024-12-3 ] refused to set a timetable for declaring the country’s telecommunications systems free of interlopers. Officials had previously told NBC News that China hacked AT&T, Verizon and Lumen Technologies to spy on customers."21There's been a lot of good research done lately on how to achieve trusted communication on untrusted platforms and over untrusted channels. Encryption is a big part of that.
And there are a number of scenarios where the ISP creates a hostile environment without having been compromised by an external actor. A malicious government, for example, or an ISP wanting to exploit customer communications for commercial reasons.
13Hey you guys remember that big AT&T breach recently?
8FBI: Here's some communications security tips from the Sureños: tell someone you'll meet them and leave your phone in a nightstand
5Just stop using your electronic devices. Not like they don't all have monitors built in already anyway. Every connected device could be sending screenshots home and we'd never know. I mean, I guess you could use something like Wireshark to monitor your home network, but something tells me nowadays there are ways around even that. I'm not a certified network tech or even a script kiddie, but I don't trust my tech as far as my dog can throw it. I just try to secure through obfuscation as much as possible. Everyone thinks I have carbon monoxide poisoning, but it's a small price to pay for peace of mind - even a small one.
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