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People are becoming increasingly concerned about their privacy rights when using communication platforms and are attracted to the promise of safeguards and offerings of end-to-end encryption. Billions of people use free apps for encrypted communications, including WhatsApp despite its many leaks.

Even Apple, which has a reputation of security, has been the victim of high-profile hacks. Apple’s defences were breached by the United Arab Emirates infamous hacking case in 2016 using a cyber super-weapon.

Project Raven was the name of the operation, which resulted in three former US intelligence and military personnel being charged with two counts each of conspiracy to commit device fraud and computer hacking and conspiracy to violate arms export control regulations.

The trio of hackers-for-hire were fined $1.68 million – the first resolution of its kind – for providing the Emirates government with the malicious software used in the exploits. The tool was a unique type of spyware that remotely targeted victims.

Zero-Click Exploits

Newly unsealed court documents charged former US intelligence officers Marc Baier, Ryan Adams and Daniel Gericke in the attack, which used a cyber tool known as Karma.

Typically, to use malware on a victims’ phone the user would need to click on a link before their device could be compromised. That wasn’t the case with this type of breach. In a zero-click attack, the victim isn’t aware they have been targeted. The hackers were able to get remote access to the iPhones of those under surveillance by simply uploading phone numbers or email addresses into the automated targeting system.

Veterans of cyber warfare say tools that can exploit hundreds of iPhones at once are being used by many nations including Russia, China, the US and its closest allies. Knowledge of security vulnerabilities for Apple devises can be valuable and the company knows it, which is why it has paid up to $1-million through the Security Bounty program to head off attacks.

Apple users are right to be worried they too could become victims of hackers.

Who Was Hacked?

Reuters reports those targeted under the direction of UAEs monarchy included the Emir of Qatar as well as a Nobel Peace laureate human-rights activist in Yemen and several people in the United States.

In 2016 and 2017, Karma allowed hackers to obtain photos, emails, text messages, and location information from the iPhones of its targets. It also let the hackers harvest saved passwords, which could then be used for other breaches.

The former US intelligence operatives said Karma relied, at least partially, on a flaw in Apple’s messaging system, iMessage. This flaw let the hackers implant malware on the phones even if they were not in use.

It is estimated thousands were monitored in Project Raven. If prominent citizens and heads of state can get hacked using a phone that is thought to be secure, no wonder the public feels unsafe?

Americans selling spy tools to foreign countries so they can spy on American citizens is scandalous, but is it different than the US spying on its own citizens, as the NSA has done for years?

Not an Isolated Incident

Anybody following similar scandals like Operation Dunhammer won’t be surprised that the privacy scandals of big and small countries are inextricably linked. In that case, the US got Denmark to spy on its own citizens, versus in this case, where they enabled another country to spy on Americans.

The number of countries with the capacity to hack on this scale isn’t very relevant when the ones that lack the tools can make deals with the ones that can. If a country or institution wants to spy on people but doesn’t have the technology, they can partner with those who do.

Without the world’s most secure custom mobile communications system anyone could fall prey to attacks in which personal information can be leaked to governments intent on using hackers to spy. Only the strongest encryption on the market can prevent hackers from obtaining your sensitive information.

The possibility is real for a major cyber-attack to be taking place now that we won’t hear about for years. Protect your communications today with advanced encryption on a platform that provides you with true security and ensures your privacy.

Most people are trapped when it comes to their phones:  they know smartphones often pose major privacy and security liabilities, but they’re a required part of modern life. As a result, billions of people continue to use phones despite their worries over privacy breaches.

Some try to solve this dilemma by using free apps, like Telegram, which claim to be “heavily encrypted” to keep users secure. However, even apps that offer “end-to-end encryption” can pose data liabilities if they share user’s information (as Telegram does).

By delving deeper into the topic, the dangers in some of these allegedly secure platforms come to light.

Telegram Scrapers

Telegram has over 500 million downloads. It is advertised as a secure platform.  However, the presence of encryption doesn’t mean it doesn’t have vulnerabilities.

There are many software tools designed to export members of Telegram groups, the most popular one is called Telegram Scraper, which is the name for all AI apps that search through Telegram group chats to compile information about members. Telegram Scraper advertises itself as a “great tool for creating custom audiences for Telegram advertising campaigns.”

Telegram Scraper lets users build a list of “Telegram niche group IDs or usernames.” Extracting private data without the user’s knowledge is invasive and it’s possible to extrapolate even more information by connecting the extracted pieces together. How could such a tool exist if Telegram was truly secure?

Anyone can download Telegram Scraper and sample how it works before they buy it. In other words, you can get user information from people on Telegram before you even spend a penny.

By comparison, ChatMail encrypted mobile phones offer fully encrypted group chat and even an anonymous group chat, so this type of intrusion can’t occur.

Encryption Isn’t the Default

The word “encryption” suggests the idea of maximum security, but Telegram requires users to switch on their encryption. Why would a platform invested in security allow the option to turn encryption off, never mind default to such an insecure mode for new users?

While it’s hard to know the number, it’s likely many of the 500 million people who use it don’t know their communications are not protected by encryption. Also, Telegram only offers encryption in certain places: Secret Chats and voice and video calls.

The app supports group chats of up to 200,000 people, an astonishingly high number that surpasses what rivals offer in the group chat mode. In other words, if hackers manage to hack one group, it could breach the privacy of many innocent and unsuspecting people.

In fact, in 2018, Motherboard reported that German police had hacked Telegram and used it to spy on citizens for years. They even coded a software called “Bundestrojaner” (a federal Trojan horse) that made it easy.

Although police, in this case, spied on citizens to arrest a far-right terrorist cell, the fact remains Telegram users were vulnerable in ways they didn’t know at the time. Police have spied on at least twelve other groups, too, according to Motherboard’s information.

Law enforcement agencies have occasionally been criticized for pursuing the wrong people, accidentally or even for deliberately targeting perceived enemies who were not guilty of committing a crime.

It could have been the other way around, with terrorists hacking the platform to get confidential, sensitive information on citizens. While it’s easier to shrug off an illegal communications breach when authorities stop a violent terrorist threat, accepting this type of snooping sets a dangerous precedent.

At the very least, it’s scary to think that nefarious actors can also exploit such a gaping security hole. There are many reasons to secure your communication no matter who you are, as every ordinary person has sensitive data worth a lot of money to hackers.

Telegram Relocates

The country in which a communications platform operates has important implications for security, since any government can change the laws in ways that effect user privacy. Telegram was based in Russia and left St. Petersburg for Dubai, UAE, citing “local IT reasons.” As Russia officially blocked Telegram in June, 2020, that is an understatement.

The Russian government had asked Telegram to store users’ encryption keys and provide them to the Federal Security Service. The company protested, saying it was impractical, since the encryption keys are only stored on the devices themselves and the move would violate the constitutional rights of citizen’s privacy. The Kremlin didn’t back down so Telegram left, saying they’d move again if faced with the same conflict elsewhere.

This story outlines why it’s important to be based in a democratic country that respects the rule of law and citizen’s rights. It says something of Telegram’s integrity to relocate rather than remain in place and then having to bow to the state’s overreach. This type of pressure is being exerted around the world.

Cloud Chats

Telegram stores messages in “cloud chats,” which are described as “automated algorithms” that analyze communications to prevent spam or phishing. The cloud chats are not encrypted. A flaw was detected that allows an adversary to reorder messages, potentially allowing a hacker how to manipulate Telegram’s bots.

Researchers from the University of London discovered coding that enabled attackers to extract plaintext from encrypted messages in Android, iOS and desktop versions of Telegram. There are also privacy problems with Facebook and its encryption on smartphones and other platforms it owns, like WhatsApp, but even apps that are known for being secure can have exposures.

The only way to ensure your private communications are not accessed, analyzed, stored, or sold is to get a fully encrypted phone, built from the ground up with privacy in mind. When a phone has industry-leading security and privacy features, you’ll be confident the encryption is protecting you and that the service provider has safeguards in place to prevent anyone from spying on you or selling your data.

Myntex solutions deliver military-grade encryption and a suite of secondary security features to protect your communications. ChatMail phones deliberately exclude third-party apps because we value privacy above all, so we’ve designed our platform to let people enjoy the best of both worlds: modern smartphone functionality without fear of a data breach.

It’s no surprise encryption is under attack in a digital world where information is highly profitable. Knowledge is power and companies who traffic in personal data, like Facebook, know its value.

Privacy protection laws force social media companies to obtain permission before collecting marketing data from users, so encryption presents an obstacle. Facebook is researching how to get around this using artificial intelligence with homomorphic encryption. This technology would allow the company to read and analyze data without decrypting messages.  It could be used to develop targeted advertising technology. Third-party companies could also analyze the data.

Other tech giants, including Microsoft, Amazon and Google, are working on homomorphic encryption. Although the ability to deploy this technology is still years away, Facebook could harvest insight across its direct message platforms with this approach, including Messenger and Instagram (which currently are not encrypted) as well as WhatsApp.

Clearly, there is a conflict between user privacy and the business model of tech corporations like Facebook. Despite Facebook’s repeated assurances to the contrary, how devoted to privacy can a company possibly be if they are working this hard to undermine it?

Legitimate Uses for Homomorphic Encryption

Homomorphic encryption isn’t inherently bad or necessarily a privacy loophole. There may be instances where homomorphic encryption could solve real problems. A medical researcher, for example, could collate information about patients, which may be useful for treatments, but the US Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act prevents the sharing of private medical data. In this example using a homomorphic encryption scheme would ostensibly retain user privacy while permitting the data to be reviewed for medical purposes. However, it introduces the possibility of misuse — especially when the companies using it are known for privacy breaches and security gaps.

End-to-End Encryption

ChatMail encrypted phones use the strongest cryptography available, layered within our impenetrable ChatMail Advanced Messaging and Parsing Protocol, using both PGP and ECC encryption.

Facebook claims to provide end-to-end encryption on WhatsApp, however, if your backups are stored on the cloud they are not encrypted – which means it is not secure.

Law enforcement agencies can use a search warrant to have Google or iCloud hand over this data WhatsApp data would show how many members a chat group has, how long the group has existed and how they interact with each other. The company collects the phone numbers and IP addresses of users, tracks how often they send outgoing messages, when they’re online, who they message, as well as their names and profile photos. It is easy to imagine how this information could be exploited.

Critics worry Facebook would optimize its platforms to harvest this data and for targeted advertising with ultra-precision.

WhatsApp alone has about two billion global users, many of whom conduct business on the platform and discuss a range of sensitive things under the belief they are protected by “end-to-end encryption.” It may be an old observation by now about how the internet works, but it still holds: if you are not paying for a product, you are the product, not the consumer.

Unreliable History

Some telecom companies seem willing to work with legal authorities. Some wonder what’s wrong with private companies creating a backdoor into their platforms if it helps fight crime? The problem is the door is open to abuse and will not only target bad actors. Innocent activists, journalists and regular citizens will all lose their privacy with such measures. Companies would be unable to prevent their data from being accessed unscrupulously.

Facebooks relationship with the Indian government was on good terms when Mark Zuckerber launched the “Free Basics” program back in 2016. But that soon soured. WhatsApp is currently suing the Indian government after it asked for a fingerprint of every single message sent on the service. Facebooks’ falling out with the government coincided with India’s attempt to gain more control over social media. A raid on Twitter’s New Delhi office by Indian police left employees feeling frightened and intimidated.

Facebook policies are hypocritical. People it considered “dangerous” and in violation of their policies were nonetheless allowed to remain on the platform when they’re allied with the government. Contradictory policies like this erode public confidence if the company can’t even enforce its own policies fairly.

Credible evidence that supporters of Donald Trump used Facebook to plan an attempted coup on the US government January 6, 2021; resulting in the death of several civilians and police officers, including two who have since committed suicide. Facebook responded by banning Trump from the platform until 2023 — when the candidates for the next Federal US election will declare their nomination.

The company has publicly rejected responsibility for allowing such a violent attack to be planned on their platform, even while an internal task force at Facebook concluded the company didn’t do enough to halt the “Stop the Steal” groups.

Facebook has one privacy standard when authorities ask them for data and another when they’re asked to turn over information about themselves.

Staying Above the Fray

Facebook’s lack of transparency is an issue — from its methods for targeting user advertising to how it allows extremist groups on the platform — which has led to dangerous real-world consequences.

Anybody looking to stay entirely above the fray and conduct business and conversations safely needs an encrypted mobile phone centred around privacy and security rather than a platform that exists so the company can sell your private data for profit to advertisers. While encryption is complicated and keeps evolving, people understand the need for business security and privacy on a visceral level. Buy a Myntex phone that uses the strongest encryption possible and comes with many secondary security features to ensure you and your data are always safe.

The World Wide Web was born 30-years ago on August 6, 1991. Just two months earlier an American computer scientist and cryptographer, Philip R. Zimmerman, wrote the code for the encryption program Pretty Good Privacy (PGP). Zimmerman shared the PGP open-source code in the United States, making it the first widely available data security program. It quickly spread globally on the web.

The U.S. government had long considered cryptographic software a munition and thus subject to arms trafficking. The Customs Service started a criminal investigation against Zimmerman for violating the Arms Export Control Act because they deemed PGP cryptography to be too strong to export. Zimmerman asserted he was not responsible for sharing the software outside of the states and responded by publishing his entire code in the book, PGP: Source Code and Internals, to the delight of those who wanted to ensure digital privacy. After 3-years the investigation was dropped in 1996 without charges against Zimmerman ever being filed. U.S. restrictions on the export of encryption software relaxed in the new millennium and cypherpunks claimed a small victory in the war on cryptography.

Today the encrypted communications industry is dominated by giants like Amazon, whose cloud computing arm Amazon Web Services (AWS) recently bought the private messaging app Wickr. Facebook owns WhatsApp and is now said to be trying to analyze encrypted WhatsApp messages.

These companies have millions of users deeply attached to their products and services, and their business leaders have one-on-one meetings with heads of state in countries worldwide.

The creator of PGP has weighed in on the contemporary situation saying the fight over encryption is not over. While Amazon and Facebook bring knowledge, relationships and wealth to the table their own privacy policies have been subject to lawsuits and public outcry. Not to mention they are mining your data every time you use their service.

Facebook is Leaky and Problematic

Almost 2-billion people use Facebook every day — a quarter of the world’s population! In April 2021, the personal data of over half a billion users was posted to a low-level hacking forum — the data included phone numbers, locations, full names, email addresses and biographical information.

Researchers say this information could be used by scammers to commit fraud. While hackers exploiting your personal data stolen from Facebook is a major concern, policies of the social media giant also threatens users privacy.

WhatsApp is suing the Indian government for severely undermining the tech giant’s encryption by requiring the platform to store all messages in a traceable database. WhatsApp promises its users that all messages are protected by end-to-end encryption, but if governments have a back door to read your messages it is an empty promise.

Twitter has also had problems in India. In May 2021, Indian police visited Twitter’s New Delhi office to serve notice about an inquiry into a tweet published by a member of the ruling party which Twitter had labelled manipulated media. Critics called it censorship.

Amazon’s Payment Processor Leaked

Last August there was a data breach at Juspay, the payment processor used by companies like Swiggy and Amazon. As a result, the personal data of 100 million debit and credit card users was leaked on the dark web. The hack didn’t come to light until January of this year. The data included the name, mobile number and bank name of customers.

Security experts noted this isn’t the end of the Juspay threat. Since the leak included phone numbers, the hackers could call unsuspecting cardholders and dupe them into revealing their full credit card number, PIN, CVV and one-time passwords.

The information of paying customers is worth a lot more to hackers and scammers than non-paying customers. The threat and scope of this enormous breach could continue to grow.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos famously had his cell phone hacked. What would be revealed if yours was too? Learn how Myntex keeps you safe from hackers in this guide to encryption so you’ll never be the victim of a data breach on your phone.

Technology has developed by leaps and bounds since the 1990s but the fight to maintain privacy rights and prevent government intrusion continues. Using an encrypted phone on a hardened device free of third-party apps is the best way to ensure your personal data is safe and secure. With our proprietary solutions, Myntex keeps you fully protected anywhere in the world.

When the government spies on citizens, we usually don’t find out until years later, if at all. In 2013, whistleblower Edward Snowden famously pulled back the curtains to reveal the size and scope of the US National Security Agency spy apparatus.

Society spent years digesting the news and considering the implications of an institution with so much power and access to eavesdrop on its own citizens. Therefore, it might be surprising to learn that the NSA spy apparatus was even more far-reaching than it appears.

Spying on European Leaders, Sharing with Europe

Governments aren’t supposed to spy on their citizens, and they definitely aren’t supposed to eavesdrop on politicians and residents of allied countries, either. Yet, a recent report lays out how the NSA collaborated with the Armed Forces Intelligence (FE) to use Danish internet cables to spy on important heads of state, top politicians, and high-ranking officials in Germany, Sweden, Norway, and France.

A 2015 internal investigation known as Operation Dunhammer revealed the extent of the spying and the nature of the collaboration between the two agencies, which took place between 2012-2014. Using a secret computer called XKeyscore, the US searches, analyzes, and collects global Internet data continually.

If foreign governments spying on their own citizens and world leaders wasn’t bad enough, the NSA has shared data gathered by XKeyscore with other intelligence agencies from New Zealand, Canada, Australia, the UK, Japan, and even Germany.

Denmark’s Defence Minister, Trine Bramsen, told the Danish public service broadcaster that “systematic wiretapping of close allies is unacceptable.” Actually, espionage is widespread and, in practice, accepted all the time, so long as it’s accompanied by a public condemnation once it’s made known.

That the NSA spied on Germany and shared intelligence data with them highlights how give-and-take international spying really is. How can a country object to such data gathering when used against them while actively collaborating with the same intelligence service?

Angela Merkel is among Europe’s most powerful leaders, and not even she was immune from having her text messages and phone calls intercepted. Indeed, the more valuable your communications are, the more likely they are to get targeted.

Not Just World Leaders 

The NSA eavesdropping on politicians and world leaders inevitably ensnares ordinary people, some of whom have excellent reasons for requiring privacy. Politicians need to communicate with a cross-section of the public, so, with the help of FE, the NSA intercepted conversations with people who contact politicians from a range of backgrounds.

What if a person is illegally hiding because they’re persecuted in their home country? What if a journalist needs to discuss sensitive issues? It could be political activists, opposition politicians from foreign countries, and countless others. 

Indeed, the NSA engages in such widespread wiretapping to maximize the communications intercepted. Relying on encrypted cell phone communication is the only way citizens and even high-ranking politicians can stay above the fray and ensure their messages, emails, and phone conversations don’t get intercepted.

Fallout Since the Scandal

In June 2021, France’s Europe Minister Clement Beaune spoke to France Info radio about the fallout since the Operation Dunhammer scandal became public. “It’s extremely serious,” he said.

“We need to see if our partners in the EU, the Danes, have committed errors or faults in their cooperation with American services…between allies, there must be trust, a minimal cooperation, so these potential facts are serious.” Notice, the objection expressed is not over spying in general, but the levels of cooperation and trust in espionage.

It’s not clear if the Danes knew the US was using their cables for spying on neighbouring countries. Other allegations need to be verified, and officials from Germany and other European nations offered measured statements stressing the need to figure out precisely what happened while condemning what appears to have occurred.

Everybody knows that countries spy. American politicians may worry about the diplomatic consequences between allied nations after having been caught. But the US has had a broad wiretapping service in place for years and even tapped Merkel’s mobile phone. If the Danish-US spying story is confirmed, the NSA carried out its spy program before and after Snowden blew the whistle on it.

Moving Forward

It’s essential to take a slow and sober look at this story and determine what exactly occurred. But there’s nothing encouraging here for ordinary people with fears over privacy concerns.

The NSA does not appear like it’s about to reverse course, let alone slow down its spy program, and France and the other European countries will likely resume their relationship with the US as if nothing happened once the headlines die down.

Amid all the very pressing international news concerning COVID-19 and conflicts, Operation Dunhammer wasn’t exactly the main story on the newspaper’s first page. However, the story itself is a new revelation about spying that took place years ago, and maybe it would have got more traction had the events themselves been new.

One person whose notice it didn’t escape is Edward Snowden himself, who pointed out on Twitter that: “Biden is well-prepared to answer for this when he soon visits Europe, since, of course, he was deeply involved in this scandal the first time around.”

If these politicians were using ChatMail device encryption on a hardened phone, they would have been safe against the NSA and other hackers or international spy agencies. It’s impossible to discover that you need this level of security until it’s too late. If even allied nations spy on their friends, who exactly is safe?

Please read this encryption guide to understand how Myntex products use military-grade encryption that can’t be decrypted and several secondary security features to fill any potential vulnerabilities. Foreign intelligence services don’t have a pressing need to intercept your phone records. Still, they eavesdrop on countless ordinary people every day, and even people with a dedicated service of bodyguards don’t have secure communications. So take care of your online privacy now because, by the time you realize it’s necessary, it’ll be too late.

In the gap between opportunity and the limitations that society’s uphold, womxn often find themselves on a different footing than their male counterparts – especially in the workplace. Historically, the tech space has been male-dominated, and many of the same barriers in place then are still here today. Reasons like this explain why only 14% of coders are womxn.

Myntex is passionate about full device encryption and coding, and we strongly believe in eliminating systemic barriers to increase access in the tech sector. We want our industry to be open and welcoming and think that, given technology’s importance in society, everyone must shape it together.

Myntex is proud to announce that we are partnering with Chic Geek, a non-profit that boosts gender diversity in the tech sector. You may have noticed above the spelling “womxn.” We have adopted Chic Geek’s preferred spelling in solidarity and because it’s meaningful. They explain the significance behind the spelling as follows:

“womxn: pronounced [wim-in] – Chic Geek uses womxn with an “x” as an intersectional and inclusive definition that embraces trans, gender queer and non-binary individuals. We use the ‘x’ as a reminder that gender identity is a vibrant, beautiful spectrum and we welcome all women-identifying individuals and allies.”

Nobody should be marginalized, and businesses have an obligation to address systemic biases proactively. On a more fundamental level, we want to help our colleagues map out their lives and do their best work. Everybody loses when gender diversity remains entrenched and unaddressed.

We usually use this space to look at Myntex encrypted communication and developments in the news relating to encryption, but let’s take a closer look at the gender disparity problems Chic Geek is trying to address and their approach to solutions.

For Women, the Talent Funnel in the Tech Sector is Leaky

There are many signs that womxn in the tech sector face unique struggles that impact their career. Only 25% of tech jobs are held by womxn, a figure which hasn’t changed in the last ten years.

About half the womxn who enter the tech sector quit prematurely, usually in their 30s or 40s. It would be wrong and misleading to assume that womxn leave these fields for things like increased work-life balance or family reasons.

The reality is more disturbing. According to Harvard Business Review’s Sylvia Ann Hewlett, as much as 63% of womxn who worked in science, engineering, and technology report experiencing sexual harassment on the job. Machismo, perhaps more generally known as “toxic masculinity,” is a threat to the lives and careers of womxn, which takes many forms.

Womxn who work in male-dominated tech environments talk about facing demeaning and condescending attitudes, sexual innuendo, off-colour jokes, and other problematic everyday behaviours, which only compound and grow worse the more frequently they occur.

While the percentage of womxn employed across all job sectors in the US grew to 47%, in the five largest tech companies (Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Google, and Microsoft), womxn make up only 34.4% of those hired. Considering the social, economic, and cultural impact these companies have on the world at large, it’s not an overstatement to say that sidelining womxn at tech companies effectively sidelines them from the world.

A study conducted by Indeed found that the main reason womxn leave their technology jobs is lack of growth opportunities, as indicated by 28% of respondents. They may find jobs, but they plateau over time without greater chances for economic and professional growth.

When womxn are few in a work environment, it leads to other harmful trickle-down effects, such as no female mentors, role models, or even friends. Our guide to encryption gives people insights about their digital security, but without people who understand the workplace issues womxn face, nobody is there to help them navigate their way through.

Chic Geek Career Pathing

Tackling such a diffuse and widespread problem as fixing gender diversity in the workplace may seem daunting, but people worldwide are trying. Chic Geek has already accomplished much through its initiatives to engage companies and institutions to help womxn see more career visibility.

For example, Chic Geek’s Career Pathing is an online program where womxn with intermediate jobs in the tech industry have a 30-minute conversation with someone a few steps ahead of them but in a similar career journey. Such an approach helps womxn find new possibilities, opportunities, growth areas, and strategic connections.

It’s crucial for everyone to explore their career path deeply, but womxn simply aren’t as able to come in contact with a female colleague with first-hand tech experience to offer meaningful guidance. Just like knowing that choosing Myntex encrypted communication keeps the hackers away, you need the right access to people with experience and insight to be in your corner.

Chic Geek makes it easier for every womxn to find their community and grow their confidence.

The Business Case for More Gender Diversity

While gender diversity is a human rights issue, there are also self-interested reasons why companies should pursue it. A 2020 report from McKinsey found that diverse companies perform better, hire better talent, have more employee engagement, and retain workers better than companies that do not focus on inclusion and diversity.

Even if a tech company is not motivated to address gender inequality for ethical or social principles, the business case speaks for itself. Put another way: there is money to be made by eradicating gender discrimination from your company.

Society needs to pursue multiple approaches to removing systemic gender barriers at once, and thankfully that is already underway. It’s great to see more girls and young womxn encouraged to take up STEM skills in school, but it’s also crucial to retain the womxn already in the tech sector by keeping them happy and driven in their work.

When you think about it, isn’t it odd that companies pay millions in settlements and suffer devastating reputational damage because of breaches only made possible by the very latesttechnology? The means of transmitting information decades ago might have been much slower before digital technology took off, but it was also much harder to intrude on people’s private conversations.

Today’s communication devices are beautiful aesthetic achievements that offer a dazzling user experience, and they control seemingly every aspect of modern life. Just because technology makes something easy to do does not mean it’s secure enough to do!

Billions of people use smartphones every day, and their ubiquity is enough to lull people into a false sense of security. How risky can they be if everyone uses them, especially if they’re protected by “end-to-end encryption,” right?

Right now, your digital privacy rights can be undermined by both illegal and legal means, underscoring just how vulnerable phones without military-grade encryption are to a breach. It’s complicated, but understanding encryption and how hackers pose one type of threat is crucial. Still, the legal backdoors that governments give to police and military institutions in the name of security pose a different kind of risk altogether.

Around the world, the tension between digital privacy rights and national security is being settled in courtrooms.

Smartphones put people face to face instantly — they’re part of the fabric of modern life, and business can’t proceed without them. But new technology without industry-leading device encryption creates new vulnerabilities.

In a globalized world, a government that systematically undermines encryption in one country is a problem in all of them.

Brazil’s Encryption Backdoor 

Brazil’s Supreme Court has not submitted its final decision regarding whether “end-to-end encryption” is legal in the country after WhatsApp was suspended for not complying with judicial orders requiring the company to submit decrypted data.

The outcome of the case will determine if encryption itself is legal and, if so, should companies that provide encryption be required to give backdoor or access to the authorities when required. In other words, even if encryption is deemed legal, the government may still compel companies to hand over people’s encrypted communications anyway.

Forcing companies to decrypt communications and give them to the government undermines and even subverts the entire purpose of encryption, but it also creates other security vulnerabilities. What if an unauthorized third party sneaks in a backdoor meant for the government?

The battle over encryption is at the heart of online regulations. Brazilian President Bolsonaro himself has spewed wild COVID-19 misinformation, even though the virus has killed over 400,000 Brazilians, and has filed criminal charges against reporters like Glenn Greenwald for uncovering corruption.

The idea of assisting legal authorities in national security sounds laudable, but compromising privacy rights is equivalent to eliminating them — either there is encryption, or there isn’t. It’s easy to underestimate how data is collected by the government and other parties, so handing over privacy rights to a politician with Bolsonaro’s history outlines how quickly legal powers can be abused.

Encryption in India

India’s Madras High Court, one of the country’s three High courts, has considered WhatsApp’s role in spreading disinformation and cyber-bullying, a major problem in the country. Tamil Nadu’s advocate general argued that end-to-end encryption is not essential and that WhatsApp should fingerprint each communication.

The courts want the ability to trace back every communication made on any platform and try to argue that this is compatible with the goals of encryption and privacy. The status of encryption protection is like Free Speech rights, but for software.

India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, has forced social media companies like Facebook and Twitter to remove posts that criticize the government. Anyone hoping that this government would respect privacy rights concerning encryption over national security has only to see how Modi uses strong-arm tactics to control messaging in the social media landscape, where an army of “IT strategists” who work for the Bharatiya Janata Party has very close links to Facebook employees.

India has genuine national security concerns, but it’s easy to imagine that the Modi government will sidestep encryption protections with partisan politics in mind, then invoke “national security” as an excuse. Indeed, the Modi government was accused of spying on citizens in 2019, using an Israeli spyware company to access citizens’ WhatsApp messages, calls and even turn on their phone’s microphone and camera.

Encryption and Terrorism in the EU

Courts in the EU are drawing closer to banning end-to-end encryption on platforms like WhatsApp and Signal in the wake of terror attacks in the late part of 2020.

The EU said in a leaked draft resolution that “competent authorities in the area of security and criminal justice” needed to exercise their lawful powers in the course of their work and rely more heavily now on “accessing electronic evidence.”

Like elsewhere, online security experts in the EU reiterate that governments can either uphold privacy rights or deliberately give backdoor access to the authorities, but not both. ProPrivacy’s Ray Walsh outlines the various kinds of threats: “Removing strong end-to-end encryption creates vulnerabilities that can be exploited not just by the EU government agencies, but also by anybody — hackers, cybercriminals, and state-sanctioned operatives from other countries.

In other words, the compromised encryption laws that governments are leaning towards to strengthen national security may deprive citizens of their privacy rights while also creating new ways to weaken national security.

Business moves at a rapid pace, and no company can afford to get left behind. But executives who cut corners and take security risks by using free apps to make deals will only realize the errors of their ways when it’s too late.  

When it comes to technology, it’s wrong to conflate sophistication with security. Indeed, some phones with very dazzling features and seem very impressive, and these might pose the largest opportunity for a security breach. Thankfully, industry leaders make an encrypted cell phone that can keep up with the pace of modern technology that requires no technical expertise to use, so it’s easy to prevent a data breach no matter what world leaders or international courts decide.

Imagine if scammers could hack computers worldwide and demand a ransom in a cryptocurrency from their victims. Actually, you don’t need to try to picture it, as it already happened in 2017.

A hacker collective known as “The Shadow Brokers” launched a devastating ransomware attack in May 2017 targeting people using the Microsoft Windows operating system. “WannaCry” encrypted their information and only returned access after the hackers had been paid a ransom in Bitcoin cryptocurrency.

As many as 200,000 computers in 150 different countries were affected, costing anywhere from hundreds of millions of dollars to billions. The attack was so vast that it made news headlines everywhere, so you probably remember it broadly. It transcended personal computers, affecting kiosks and large display terminals.

Let’s take a closer look at the WannaCry attack to better understand how it could spread so far, do so much damage, and how encrypted communication can keep you protected from something similar moving forward.

What Exactly Was WannaCry?

At first, news agencies reported that WannaCry was spread through a malicious spam campaign, as is often the case. It was an easy mistake to make, but the real story turned out to be considerably worse.

The WannaCry worm was spread by an operation that seeks out vulnerable public-facing SMB ports, then uses two exploits created by the National Security Agency, EternalBlue and DoublePulsar, to get on the network and establish persistence and allow for the installation.

An exploit technique known as “heap spraying” injects shellcode into vulnerable systems. Bits of source code reviewed by Malware Byte Labs determined that this is how the malware worked:

• The malware sends an SMB Echo request to the intended target
• Sets up the exploit for the machine architecture
• Performs SMB fingerprinting
• If successful exploitation occurs, then it’s in
• If not, the malware pings the backdoor to get an SMB reply
• If the backdoor is not installed, the malware gets uploaded

It can be difficult to discuss complicated technical issues related to coding in a way that does them justice while also being understandable. Basically, the hackers exploited backdoors created by the NSA.

The US Department of Justice officially blamed North Korea for the hack, with Canada, New Zealand, Japan, and the UK standing by this assessment. North Korea denies any involvement in the cyberattack.

The day after the first attack, Microsoft released emergency patches for end-of-life products Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, and Windows 8. Days after, British researcher Marcus Hutchins found a killswitch that prevented infected computers from spreading the malware further.

As bad as the malware attack was, it could have been much worse.

How to Avoid Becoming a Malware Victim

WannaCry couldn’t spread like wildfire or wreak such havoc had it not been for backdoors which the NSA created and the hackers then weaponized. Microsoft president Brad Smith called on countries worldwide not to log flaws in the coding that bad actors could use as digital weapons.

Countries need a national response because hackers can target public infrastructure and cause damage that impacts the economy. But as we’ve seen, sometimes a country has conflicting goals, and the backdoors they create for purposes of national security come back to bite them.

That’s why what society at large could do to prevent such an attack from occurring is not the same question as what companies or people can do right now to keep themselves safe. Private individuals or businesses need to guard their privacy at all costs — there is no second prime directive.

There are certain precautions that, if taken, would have protected someone who was otherwise vulnerable. They could have downloaded every Microsoft update, disabled unnecessary protocols, and segmented their networks to keep a potential infection more contained.

But these are half-measures. Doing all of them could have prevented the WannaCry ransomware from spreading. Military-grade encrypted phone calls and emails would have made anyone impervious to WannaCry, since the backdoors that permitted that malware wouldn’t have existed on any such device.

“Encryption” can’t be secure if there’s potentially a backdoor, and that is often the case with encryption that comes with free communication platforms, even if it promises to offer “end-to-end encryption.” Likewise, governments around the world are locked in a tense stand-off between, as they frame it, national security and privacy rights.

European and North American governments claim they can offer both, but that’s proven impossible. In practice, the measures taken in the name of national security compromise people’s digital privacy rights, even when enacted with the best intentions. The government may not be the ones violating citizens’ privacy rights by eavesdropping or collecting data, but they may inadvertently leave an opening for hackers to exploit. 

Credit: geralt via Pixabay https://pixabay.com/illustrations/cyber-attack-encryption-smartphone-4444448/

You can see here how national security always wins out over privacy rights, as for five years, the NSA did not alert Microsoft about the vulnerabilities they had created in the form of EternalBlue or DoublePulsar. They only did so after the breach occurred — in other words, after it was too late.

That’s why Myntex protection is designed to keep users’ data safe, no matter how local legislation in any region evolves. Laws may change, but the need for privacy does not.

Not all hacks or malware attacks are this disruptive or widespread, but you can’t anticipate how large or powerful they’ll be. Most people know their business much better than they understand coding or digital security. They just want to know that they can carry out their profession without leaving their company, clients, customers, or themselves vulnerable.

Check out these educational resources to learn more about how encryption works and find helpful tutorials, downloads, and software updates. People across sectors need meaningful digital security for different reasons, and it’s impossible to operate surefootedly when digital extortion is always a risk.

Modern business productivity tools keep you safe from ransomware attacks, and you don’t need to be a technical specialist to use them.

Thankfully, people are on heightened guard to keep their communications secure from hackers and identity thieves. We’ve all seen companies and even political parties suffer high-profile data breaches, and awareness of the risks out there is good because there are multiple threats out there, and they aren’t all the same.

It’s a safe bet that anything with the suffix “ware” is bad news, but having a better understanding of the specific threat can help you stay safe.

“Spyware” is a unique risk that can permanently compromise your phone, so let’s learn more about it now.

Different Types of Trojan Horses

The poet Virgil describes in The Aeneid the story of the ancient Trojans, the ancestors of the Roman civilization. The Greeks appeared to have sailed back home after a long siege, and all that remained was a large wooden statue of a horse — the Trojans wheeled it inside their gates, thinking it a trophy of war, and at night the Greek soldiers hiding inside crept out and sacked the city as it slept.

When it comes to spyware, a Trojan is a type of malicious code that looks legitimate, but can take control of your computer. A Trojan disguises itself as something the user wants, and after it’s downloaded, it can damage, disrupt, steal data, or inflict other harms on you.

Have you ever seen a suspicious email from someone you don’t recognize asking you to click a dubious link? Such emails could very well be a cybercriminal trying to lure you into downloading the Trojan. Unlike a computer virus, a Trojan can’t replicate itself on your device.

It can only get onto your computer or phone if you open the door. Once a Trojan is inside the gates, you can’t get it back outside, and the danger is irreversible. Likewise, once your phone is compromised with a Trojan, it’s better to throw it away and buy a new one.

There are multiple types of Trojan, and all of them are dangerous. A Ransom Trojan seeks ransom money from the user and will bar access to their own device until they pay. A Remote Access Trojan can give the hacker control over your device and steal your information and spy on you.

Some Trojans are designed specifically for phones. An SMS Trojan can send and intercept text messages. Apart from stealthily compromising the security and confidentiality of your messages, they can message premium-rate numbers and drive up your phone bill.

A person may have a Trojan on their cell phone without knowing it and carry on indefinitely as if everything is normal.

Law Enforcement Uses Spyware?

Trojans aren’t only used by cybercriminals. In fact, law enforcement agencies in places like Germany have used them to sidestep encryption and eavesdrop on suspected individuals. Security gaps on people’s phones left them susceptible to what police grimly and euphemistically call “source telecommunication surveillance.”

Federal police used Trojans to access information stored on smartphones. For “operational reasons,” they refused to say the extent to which they use spyware to listen in on private citizens.

Spyware can monitor the most sensitive data on your phone, including:

• Call history, including phone numbers, dates, and length of calls
• Contacts
• Texts messages, even phone number and SMS content
• Photos
• Internet browsing history and bookmarks
• Emails downloaded to the phone

That criminals and law enforcement alike both use spyware only reinforces how many people are potentially trying to access sensitive information and how varied the threats are. Cybercriminals are dangerous when they know how to weaponize spyware, but at least they don’t have the protections and resources of the state behind them.

How Do You know if Your Phone has Spyware On it?

Spyware is a trap that must be cloaked for as long as possible for it to be effective. By design, it’s hard to tell when spyware has infected your phone. If the victim knew their device was compromised, they’d use a new phone and put an end to the threat.

If your phone is infected with spyware, you may notice it gets hot, or the battery quickly drains when you’re not using it. However, these things could be attributed to other perfectly innocuous reasons, such as the phone is simply getting older.

You may also see unexpected notifications or startup and shutdown times that are longer than usual. Ultimately, if you’re in a position where you’re unsure if you have spyware on your phone, you haven’t taken your cybersecurity seriously enough in the first place. Using a ChatMail phone is an effective way to know you’re free of spyware.

How to Steer Clear of Spyware

Safe habits are crucial to keep everyone’s sensitive information private. There are a few basic things you can do to reduce the odds of encountering spyware.

• Avoid unsafe websites: if security software indicates a site may not be safe, close the window
• Be skeptical of strange emails: don’t open a link from an email address you don’t recognize
• Don’t download software or programs unless you trust the publisher
• Never click on pop-up windows promising free stuff or helpful services

Taking the above precautions should be engrained in your daily habits and your colleagues’ too. If somebody in your office gets their phone compromised, it could directly affect you or your business. Organizations are only as strong as their weakest link, so everyone has a role to play in cybersecurity.

Keeping up with cybersecurity risks is often a game of cat and mouse — people who use spyware try to find new weaknesses to exploit, while cybersecurity experts keep vigilant, trying to anticipate and patch up any security holes before they become problems. In addition to taking basic steps to avoid falling into a trap, platforms using ChatMail help people communicate confidently without fear of spyware or other security vulnerabilities.

For peace of mind and business stability, the best encrypted phone provider lets you stay connected without worrying about all the threats out there, including every form of spyware. Don’t hesitate to contact us today to learn more about our secure platform.

Phrases like “end-to-end encryption” are thrown around so commonly today that one would think everyone has in-depth knowledge of encryption. Encryption is a ubiquitous term but a complex subject.

To be sure, the average person doesn’t need to have expert knowledge about the ins and outs of encryption to safeguard their privacy, just like you don’t need to understand how a combustion engine works to drive a car.

However, sometimes mechanical skills do come in handy, and understanding the basic concept of encryption will help you appreciate what separates military-grade encryption from the popular platforms promising to be secure. Let’s look at what encrypted communication is and how it works.

Encryption, the Basics

When data is stored on a computer, the Cloud, on the phone, or transmitted across the internet, encryption is what keeps it confidential. Encryption transforms data into indecipherable text that looks like gibberish, and only authorized people with the right decryption key can render the text into a readable format.

Usually, the length of this code is what determines whether the encryption is “strong” or “weak.” Historically, 40-bit encryption keys were standard. They had one billion possible keys and combinations. While this may sound secure, even a common home computer from 2014 could crack this in a matter of two weeks.

Today’s 128-bit keys are exponentially more secure. If one billion permutations seemed large, the full number of possible keys and combinations on a 128-bit key is worth writing out in full: 340,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.

However, robust security entrusted to safeguard national security secrets requires more than just a long bit-key. Aside from short key length, implementation flaws, weak algorithms, and bad passwords can also compromise the encryption’s ability to protect your data.

What is Encryption Used For?

While it’s common for people to associate encryption with smartphone technology and cybercrime, more primitive forms of encryption have been around for a long time, even dating back to Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics! It makes more sense to consider encryption in its current context, as the world revolves around digital technology, and encryption is at the heart of what keeps it secure.

Governments everywhere use encryption for safeguarding vast swathes of the economy, critical infrastructure, and national security. On a smaller scale, private individuals in positions of power use encryption (or ought to!) to ensure that nobody can access confidential communications to facilitate blackmail, corporate sabotage, identity theft, and other crimes.

Is Encryption Legal in Your Country?

There is currently a legal debate brewing between some well-intentioned people who want to give law enforcement access to encrypted communications and those who understand that building in any weakness in the encryption fatally undermines everything encryption is meant to protect — i.e., the bulk of modern society. 

Unlike its Western Five Eyes allies, Canada has traditionally refused to adopt or advance a reckless encryption policy that required private companies to build weaknesses into their cryptographic algorithms intentionally.

According to critics writing in outlets like Citizen Lab, The federal government’s attitude changed in 2019, aligning with major Western countries wanting some type of access to encrypted communications.

Down in the US, there is a heated, ongoing legal debate about how to reconcile law enforcement demands to access communications against the need for privacy rights for citizens, companies, and even government agencies.

The EARN IT act is ostensibly a crackdown on child sexual exploitation online, but critics warn that it threatens to erode badly-needed protections that society depends on. While this bipartisan proposition doesn’t explicitly oppose encryption, you don’t need to read much between the lines to understand that backdoor access to online communications is incompatible with secure encryption.

Tech leaders like Google, Facebook, Microsoft and others have pledged to follow the “voluntary principles” that were set out to curb predation online, but it’s still undetermined how exactly the government will draw the line between law enforcement’s need to peek behind the encryption and civil society’s need for security.

Even if you were to accept in principle that the government should be able to bypass encryption laws, the opening that gets left for them to do so could be exploited by malicious third parties. Legal questions about encryption are not just a matter of philosophy or even the law; it’s nearly impossible to discuss on a serious level without making very strict and technical definitions.

As always, the devil is in the details. With a new presidential administration in the US, they may take a new tack on encryption. Though with Australia and the EU seemingly at war with encryption, and considering the EARN IT act was supported by senators from both parties, the writing could be on the wall.

In the meantime, industry leaders like ChatMail Secure continue to provide state-of-the-art security, flexibility, and responsive customer service.

Why You Need Encryption

The legal and technical battles have enormous implications for the average citizen. COVID-19 has only accelerated the rate at which people have moved online, from Zoom calls to ecommerce.

The average person may not fear hackers or identity thieves are targeting them. Still, everyone has sensitive data that could be exploited by hackers to make a lot of money via identity theft, fraud, and even ransom. The global conversation around encryption involves complex legal and technical problems, but the way these questions are resolved will have an enormous impact on ordinary people’s everyday life.

Somebody falls victim to cybercrime every 39 seconds, and eventually, this person could be you, or it could be someone linked to your company. In our digital, interconnected world, people who work in banking, finance, journalism, defence, the energy sector, and a range of activists have a direct need to keep sensitive communications private.

There are fascinating success stories about encryption that demonstrate how safeguarding communications can be a matter of life or death.

Everyday smartphone users must get a more nuanced understanding of how encryption works and not automatically trust that “end-to-end encryption” is fully secure. Here are some Myntex resources that will help you better understand how our products address contemporary security needs. Genuinely secure platforms exceed the data security offered by WhatsApp and Signal to allow everyday users to get the best security on the market without having to understand complicated technical matters or follow evolving legal questions.