German police read WhatsApp messages without cracking encryption

cross-posted from : lemmy.zip/post/71321898

Netzpoltik details that police are able to gain access in this way either through physical access to someone’s phone or by intercepting verification codes via a state-sanctioned phishing attack or intercepting SMS messages via telephone surveillance

There have been too many of these types of events related to signal. And it has so many red flags. You are required to have a phone number which is essentially ur real identity. They used to federate with 3rd party servers but they killed that and all but wiped it from the internet. They try to shut down 3rd party clients. They don’t provide reproducible builds so we can’t trust the source. They received their initial funding from In-Q-Tel the CIA venture capital firm.

Every time someone tries to raise any of these issues they are immediately shut down and told that its all for a good reason and that we should trust it.

At minimum they have a full social graph of real identities with time-stamped message events. Sealed sender doesn’t negate this as signal knows ur ip address when u give them a message. They also know the destination of that message as that isn’t sealed. This is sufficient information to link sender and recipient and timestamp. That’s assuming the unreproducible builds don’t have backdoors.

It’s all got a slightly fishy smell to it.

Tldr: If u want actual secure messaging u should consider SimpleX

There are all of these stories about signal because it is notable when someone gets around it

That there’s anything approaching secure communication on a cell-phone dominated Internet whose.operating systems are either “snobbish walled garden” or “ad agency living in the corpse of a search engine” is astonishing. In the same way that a gun safety that keeps a toddler from shooting themselves with an otherwise loaded gun is astonishing.

can’t get around simplex encryption unless you have physical access to the device or have been physically invited by a member.

Ok so no better than Signal?

You can do all the same things and use Tor, allow Sealed sender, and rotate username with phone number hidden.

Why does Simplex want investors?

what company doesn’t want to grow or maintain services? they host the primary servers that everyone uses, that costs money.

you could host your own though. can you do that with signal?