WhatsApp hack: Don’t believe politicians, it’s never been ‘impossible to crack’

The WhatsApp hack is not the first, and will not be the last time that supposedly “invulnerable” encrypted systems prove to be anything but.

In all such cases it’s useful to remember the showdown between Apple and the FBI after Syed Rizwan Farook launched a terror attack in California in 2015 with Tashfeen Malik, killing 14. The Feds wanted data on his iPhone but couldn’t crack the security to get in. Apple wouldn’t help. A bust up ensued. But just as quickly it went away. Suddenly, the Feds didn’t need Apple. They’d found their own way in.

Or, at least, someone else had found a way in and was prepared to sell it to them (for $900,000). And that company was Cellebrite, an Israeli cyber arms firm, and one of the extraordinary cluster of digital security startups emerging from the Israeli military, the IDF…….read more

Source: The Telegraph