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<non-tech> Cross-border terrorism is real. Real-time support (operational and financial) by foreign and local bad actors is real. Governments have a mandate to

<non-tech> Cross-border terrorism is real. Real-time support (operational and financial) by foreign and local bad actors is real. Governments have a mandate to protect their citizens against them and have to keep up with the tactics, techniques and procedures of these bad actors. So, let's not be surprised or shocked when we see news like this. </non-tech> Many apps in this list are also highly vulnerable. Threema, for example, was found to have serious security vulnerabilities due to rolling its own crypto implementations. It is interesting to note that Signal, WhatsApp, iMessage and soon Twitter DMs – all of which claim to have E2E encryption – are not on this list. Does that mean these companies have a way to break encryption and provide access to government when they ask for it? I suspect metadata is definitely accessible via these companies. Interestingly these are all messengers that have mobile phone numbers as primary user handles whereas a lot of the banned messengers are not. So, its possible that there are phone number based zero-click exploits for these popular apps that governments across the world use (remember NSO?) whereas not for less popular apps.

MattPalmer1086 3y ago
I very much doubt the Indian government can break the encryption of Signal or WhatsApp. The article says that the apps that were banned provided anonymity.
- vinay_ys 3y ago
  Govt don't need to break encryption technically. They just need to have lawful orders issued to the app or platform companies to comply to provide the information about the targets (1-1 chats or group chats). Question is - can the companies comply? Do the companies themselves have backdoors so they can comply? Btw, there are laws on the books that say they ought to have mechanisms such that they can comply.
  - MattPalmer1086 3y ago
    The only way a company providing end to end encrypted messaging service can comply with such an order is to ship a backdoored version of their client software. This might send copies of the messages somewhere else as well, or use deliberately weakened keys, or something like that. There is no way for the companies to break the encryption on their servers without compromising the client first.
    - vinay_ys 3y ago
      Usually, each message is encrypted with a new symmetric key that's unique per message and that key is encrypted with the public key of the recipient and included in the envelope of the message. It isn't hard to ask the client to also encrypt the symmetric key to company's own monitoring public keys and include it in the envelope. Presumably this can be done dynamically on-demand (when a govt monitoring request comes in) by the company servers. It is also conceivable that all symmetric keys of past 30 days of messages are stored on the client and can be asked to be sent to server on-demand. If all this functionality ("backdoor") is already baked into the client, and carefully masked to look like legitimate functionality of the app, then there's no need to "compromise" the client afterwards. We are talking about private, for-profit companies running closed-source service with closed-source client and with TLS-key-pinned client-server RPCs. And we are talking about closed-source phones running closed-source hardware, firmware, OS, and platform services. Even if the app was open-source (like Signal) there are plenty of injection points to do the above at the lower-levels.
      - MattPalmer1086 3y ago
        Yes, there are many ways it could be done. However, I doubt that a private company whose business model was end to end encryption would secretly bake a back door into every client by default. Any exposure of this by reverse engineering or whistle blowing would end the business. Why would a private company work against their own interests in that way? I could imagine that specific clients got special back doored versions under some kind of secret court order, but I'm not sure what the delivery mechanism would be for that. Edit: your final point that you could compromise a device independently of the app itself seems much more likely to me. Tools to do this exist and have been provided to governments.
anilgulecha 3y ago
The difference probably is that they have Indian office and representatives. The article outlines that the ban happened after they were unable to reach out to any of these apps.

MattPalmer1086 3y ago

I very much doubt the Indian government can break the encryption of Signal or WhatsApp. The article says that the apps that were banned provided anonymity.

vinay_ys 3y ago
Govt don't need to break encryption technically. They just need to have lawful orders issued to the app or platform companies to comply to provide the information about the targets (1-1 chats or group chats). Question is - can the companies comply? Do the companies themselves have backdoors so they can comply? Btw, there are laws on the books that say they ought to have mechanisms such that they can comply.
- MattPalmer1086 3y ago
  The only way a company providing end to end encrypted messaging service can comply with such an order is to ship a backdoored version of their client software. This might send copies of the messages somewhere else as well, or use deliberately weakened keys, or something like that. There is no way for the companies to break the encryption on their servers without compromising the client first.
  - vinay_ys 3y ago
    Usually, each message is encrypted with a new symmetric key that's unique per message and that key is encrypted with the public key of the recipient and included in the envelope of the message. It isn't hard to ask the client to also encrypt the symmetric key to company's own monitoring public keys and include it in the envelope. Presumably this can be done dynamically on-demand (when a govt monitoring request comes in) by the company servers. It is also conceivable that all symmetric keys of past 30 days of messages are stored on the client and can be asked to be sent to server on-demand. If all this functionality ("backdoor") is already baked into the client, and carefully masked to look like legitimate functionality of the app, then there's no need to "compromise" the client afterwards. We are talking about private, for-profit companies running closed-source service with closed-source client and with TLS-key-pinned client-server RPCs. And we are talking about closed-source phones running closed-source hardware, firmware, OS, and platform services. Even if the app was open-source (like Signal) there are plenty of injection points to do the above at the lower-levels.
    - MattPalmer1086 3y ago
      Yes, there are many ways it could be done. However, I doubt that a private company whose business model was end to end encryption would secretly bake a back door into every client by default. Any exposure of this by reverse engineering or whistle blowing would end the business. Why would a private company work against their own interests in that way? I could imagine that specific clients got special back doored versions under some kind of secret court order, but I'm not sure what the delivery mechanism would be for that. Edit: your final point that you could compromise a device independently of the app itself seems much more likely to me. Tools to do this exist and have been provided to governments.

anilgulecha 3y ago

The difference probably is that they have Indian office and representatives. The article outlines that the ban happened after they were unable to reach out to any of these apps.