In December, Cellebrite, a noted Mobile forensic company announced that Signal App Crypto had been cracked and Cellebrite is assisting the Law enforcement to view messages which Signal claims to be encrypted end-to end. (See article here)
Obviously, this was a big blow to the ego of Signal as well as its claim to be the messaging solution that can be relied upon for Privacy as people move out of WhatsApp.
And Signal in its retaliatory jab, has announced that Cellebrites phone cracking software has its own vulnerabilities which the Signal founder has cracked and that the vulnerabilities can compromise privacy of individuals whose data had been accessed by Cellebrite. (Refer here)
It must be noted that Signal has admitted to “Cracking” which is an offence in every country. On the other hand Cellebrite’s UFED if used by a law enforcement agency, the compromised information would be only with the law enforcement and hence Cellebrite is reasonably protected from direct liabilities.
The mutual accusations between Cellebrite the security company and Signal the encryption company that in a given instance may be helping the criminals is an example of how companies can destroy each other for ego issues.
This is a self destructive exercise in which Cellebrite is better off as it is on the law enforcement side. For Signal, it will be a losing battle both legally as well as reputation wise.
Naavi
