The war on cryptography: under the gun of WhatsApp and Telegram

[DronVR]

The war on cryptography: under the gun of WhatsApp and Telegram

Interception of private correspondence is a very sensitive topic. On the one hand, the principles of confidentiality should be taken into account, and on the other, state security. In an era of terrorism, conflict, and senseless violence, many agree to sacrifice their privacy in exchange for security.

However, confidentiality does not lose its significance from this, and the ability to live and work without fear of being eavesdropped is very important for most people. Trying to protect the personal information of their customers, many companies turn to cryptography.

Cryptographic protection is offered to 135 million of its customers by Telegram and WhatsApp services. Despite the fact that Telegram started using encryption before its rival, WhatsApp has already managed to catch up with it. Quite naturally, the idea that people can communicate privately does not haunt the security services. Indeed, in the end, all their work comes down to eavesdropping.

BND raises funds for hacking WhatsApp

The German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) has developed a technology called “The Study of Informal Communication in Internet Projects” (ANISKI), which aims to try to circumvent encryption. The Russia Today channel recently quoted a German blog Netzpolitik saying: “ANISKI means the development of“ analysis and processing software, ”as well as“ powerful decryption equipment. ” Then they hope to “exploit ... the weaknesses in implementation that will“ allow the discovery of content. ”

For hacking such popular chat applications as WhatsApp and Telegram, BND received a budget of 150 million euros. Now BND can extract intelligence from only 10 out of 70 popular communication services. According to Sputniknews.com, the stated goal of the BND is “the fight against terrorism and illegal trafficking in human beings in the Mediterranean.”

Countries fight against cryptography

Cryptography is becoming a hindrance for many countries, some of them are even ready to ban it. Illustrative for WhatsApp was a precedent with Brazil, where the judge imposed a ban on encryption back in December 2015. This incident prompted Facebook founder and WhatsApp owner Mark Zuckerberg to write in his account:

“This is a sad day for Brazil. To date, Brazil has been an ally in creating open Internet. Brazilians have always willingly shared their opinions online. "I am surprised that our attempts to protect information about people turned out to be such an extreme decision by one judge to punish everyone using WhatsApp in Brazil."

It should be noted that Brazil went so far as to imprison the executive director of the Facebook division Diego Dzodan for not providing these chats.

In India, a lawsuit (PIL) was also held against WhatsApp, but the Supreme Court ruled in favor of WhatsApp. The lawsuit stated that encrypted applications constitute a “threat to national security." The Supreme Court of India rejected the plaintiff’s claims and filed a lawsuit for further consideration by the Indian state regulatory authority - Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).

WhatsApp hack is not needed

However, it is possible that the received BND for the fight against encryption of 150 million euros may not be needed. In June of this year, Forbes announced the presence of SS7 or Signaling System No. 7 vulnerabilities in mobile networks. These vulnerabilities allow spyware services to listen on any mobile device with a phone number. Forbes posted on its website several videos demonstrating the ability to hack a phone.

Regarding WhatsApp and Telegram, Forbes writes: “In a fraudulent way, networks make people believe that the hacker’s phone has the same number as the victim’s phone. That is, they can set up a new WhatsApp or Telegram account with the same number and receive an allegedly secret code confirming that they are “legitimate” users. From now on, they can impersonate their victim by sending and receiving new calls and messages. ”

The vulnerability of SS7 is not limited to WhatsApp. In his book Data and Goliath, Bruce Schneier writes: “The British company Cobham is selling a system that allows you to send a blind call to your phone — it does not ring and will not be detected. This blind call forces the phone to broadcast at a certain frequency, allowing the sender to track this phone at a distance of up to one meter. Among the company's customers are government customers from Algeria, Brunei, Ghana, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Singapore and the United States. Defentek, secretly registered in Panama, is selling a system that can locate and track any phone number.

@onionteam

 

[Люков]

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