- cross-posted to:
- politics@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- politics@lemmy.world
The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat about upcoming military strikes in Yemen. I didn’t think it could be real. Then the bombs started falling.
By Jeffrey Goldberg
Yeah, this article was truly a fascinating read! The one thing that surprised me from Goldberg though, was that he continually questioned their use of signal. I mean, why wouldn’t they use it?
They could try to develop their own secure messaging app, but what would be the point of that when another already exists and they can verify the code is air tight because it’s open source. And, developing their own app would mean the possibility of relying on software that could contain unknown bugs or vulnerabilities.
The only safe cryptographic systems are open source ones.
Because they did so to avoid official channels which get log and recorded. And yes, the Pentagon has their own apps, what do you think? Yes, using signal is INSANE
Yes, they have some secure communications systems, but none that are safe to use on a mobile device. Signal is literally more advanced than what they’re using. It’s far from insane.
It is absolutely insane, considering they have SCIF devices / rooms but also the option of “not using off the shelf” shit like Signal and using a phone number. But here they are.
Hell, they could even use something like Briar / Matrix / whatever that is decentralised/does not require a phone number unlike Signal but instead they sent emotes, and classified information detrimental to US citizens over a centralised (third party) platform. Literally, insane.
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Your logic is valid for a small business - yes a SME doesn’t need to create their own messaging app, but this is the US government, they have the resources and need for their own. Further, commercial products controlled by outsiders can be compromised, and for state level targets it’s an issue to not control the communication through its whole journey.
“Rolling your own” cryptographic system is rarely a good idea. There are countless examples of companies and governments deciding to ignore existing tested and verified standard industry tools on the basis they’re more vulnerable because they’re more well known, but that decision tends to bite them in the end because the solution they come up with has some critical vulnerabilities they didn’t notice in time. These things are easy to miss when there isn’t a whole global community of security professionals looking at the code.
Now I’ll admit that the US government could absolutely create a comparable or even superior solution if they put the right people and enough funding behind the project, no doubt. There is the question of whether or not it’s worth doing, worth the investment. If budgets are tight (because conservatives are so concerned about govt spending 🙄), I’d certainly rather they use signal than they decide to dedicate almost enough funding and develop something that almost works; that could also be disastrous.
Honestly, the best move for the government is probably to make their own app utilizing existing standards. The signal protocol is perfectly open and free, they just need their own clients. Well, that and some identity verification in the account creation process. But yeah, If they had their own app, they could design it to do some useful things, like verify all members in a group have appropriate security clearance. That might have come in handy…
So yeah, I don’t really disagree with you, they should probably be using their own system. But I think it’s easy to think that any bespoke system would inherently be superior, and that very much isn’t the case. And with that in mind I’d say it’s truly not a crazy or negligent choice to use the existing best-of-class systems off the shelf. It’s maybe not the best choice, but it’s not a bad one.