Security News

Signal is experiencing a partial outage as tens of millions of netizens flood the free secure messaging service. Those technical difficulties come as at least 30 million people joined the non-profit end-to-end encrypted communications platform in a matter of days this week.

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GO SMS Pro, an Android instant messaging application with over 100 million installs, is publicly exposing private multimedia files shared between its users. By abusing a flaw in the app, unauthenticated attackers can gain access to private voice messages, videos, and photos shared by GO SMS Pro users as Trustwave security researchers discovered three months ago.

Digital rights campaigners on Monday criticized a proposal by European Union governments that calls for communications companies to provide authorities with access to encrypted messages. The plan, first reported by Austrian public broadcaster FM4, reflects concern among European countries that police and intelligence services can't easily monitor online chats that use end-to-end encryption, such as Signal or WhatsApp.

An analysis of the manner in which popular chat applications handle link previews has revealed several privacy and security issues, including some that still need addressing, security researchers warn. Link previews provide users with information on what a link received in chat would lead them to, regardless of whether it is a file or a web page.

A voice-activated TV remote can be turned into a covert home surveillance device, according to researchers from infosec firm Guardicore who probed the device to show that a man-in-the-middle attack could compromise it. Guardicore discovered an attack vector on US telco giant Comcast's Xfinity XR11 voice remote - of which around 18 million units have been sold - that allowed malicious people to turn it into an eavesdropping device.

In a joint operation, European and British law enforcement agencies recently arrested hundreds of alleged drug dealers and other criminals after infiltrating into a global network of an encrypted chatting app that was used to plot drug deals, money laundering, extortions, and even murders. Dubbed EncroChat, the top-secret encrypted communication app comes pre-installed on a customized Android-based handset with GPS, camera, and microphone functionality removed for anonymity and security.

Zoom today said it will make end-to-end encryption available to all of its users, regardless of whether they pay for it or not. We note that Google Meet and other rival services do not offer E2EE. "Today, Zoom released an updated E2EE design on GitHub," Zoom CEO Eric Yuan said.

Cybersecurity researchers from Cisco Talos unveiled today that it discovered two critical vulnerabilities in the Zoom software that could have allowed attackers to hack into the systems of group chat participants or an individual recipient remotely. According to the researchers, successful exploitation of both flaws requires no or very little interaction from targeted chat participants and can be executed just by sending specially crafted messages through the chat feature to an individual or a group.