ISIS's Encrypted Messaging App Isn't Real; But Backdooring Encryption Still Won't Help The NSA

So we recently reported on a claim that ISIS had been spotted making use of their very own encrypted messaging app, and highlighting how totally useless US laws requiring tech companies to backdoor encryption would be in that situation. However, it turns out that we should have been a lot more skeptical of the original report, coming from a single sourced security company. Over the years, we've learned that single-sourced security company claims are often highly suspect, and designed much more to get attention or increase FUD, than based on any real issue. The good folks over at Daily Dot are now reporting that this encrypted messaging app doesn't really appear to exist, and their investigation is pretty thorough and fairly convincing. Just like the claims that ISIS had a "training manual for encryption," this claim appears to be false. That said, it still doesn't mean that ISIS is actually relying on encrypted apps that would be opened up by a US legal change requiring encryption backdoors. As we noted in our last post, research from the Open Technology Institute showed that almost all the popular encrypted communications app that were named as being used by ISIS were either open source or not maintained by a US company, meaning any such law would be basically meaningless to ISIS folks trying to communicate. And given the open source nature of many of those apps, it wouldn't be surprising at all to find out that, eventually, someone forks an existing project to create a separate one relied on by ISIS. And none of that would be impacted by US laws anyway. So the only impact would be on weakening the safety and security of Americans who rely on encryption every day to keep themselves safe. Permalink | Comments | Email This Story