At the same time, this means that hackers can also examine its code to find vulnerabilities. Singal’s source code is also open-source, enabling other security experts to audit it, which allows for better security updates. It only gathers metadata essential to app functionality. Since it doesn’t sell ads, it doesn’t have as much reason to collect and share user data. As such, a big tech company like Facebook won’t likely acquire it, and it doesn’t sell ads. Unlike WhatsApp, Signal is explicitly not-for-profit. So what makes it different from other encrypted messenger apps? Even before the WhatsApp update, privacy advocates have praised Signal.
Many users flocked to Signal after Elon Musk promoted it as an alternative to WhatsApp after the controversy arose. Users should be aware that it isn’t a perfect solution, though. Attackers can steal the authentication token that holds the encryption data, letting them read any messages that come through.ĭespite these vulnerabilities, end-to-end encryption provides some of the best data protection out there. In these attacks, a hacker controls a conversation between two parties without their knowledge, sometimes stripping the traffic of encryption. Consequently, any app that doesn’t also provide other security measures isn’t secure.Įnd-to-end encryption doesn’t always stop man-in-the-middle (MitM) attacks, either. If hackers can read messages before or after they’re sent, it doesn’t matter if they were encrypted in between. Spyware works around encryption instead of trying to break it. Since this spied on users’ screens instead of intercepting data, it let hackers view messages before they were encrypted or after they were unencrypted. Hackers infiltrated WhatsApp in 2019 and installed spyware on users’ devices.
That doesn’t mean encrypted messages are hack-proof.
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