Ride the Lightning

Cellebrite Says It Can Break Signal’s Encryption: True or False?

December 22, 2020

My day began with a look at Bruce Schneier's December 21 post about a Cellebrite post on December 10 (helpfully preserved by the Wayback Machine) titled "Cellebrite's New Solution for Decrypting the Signal App."

Cellebrite released a heavily edited version of that post with the same date but a new title, "Helping Law Enforcement Legally Access the Signal App." The original very long post with lots of detail was truncated into three paragraphs.

Haaretz had a story on the subject, which covers Cellebrite's claims in more detail. I loved the company's explanation about why it deleted and replaced its post: "The original blog post on the company website was replaced because it was an internal draft."

Hmmm. Comments on the Schneier post indicated that the original controversial post overstated Cellebrite's capabilities.

Another commentator (fair warning that my understanding of what was claimed and what is true is not based on technical expertise in this area) said, "No they cannot BREAK Signal – they can export locally stored messages from an unlocked (or hacked) phone . . . That's why it's a good idea to always delete messages after X days locally (which the Android version of Signal allows)."

Another article cites an expert from Amnesty International also refuting Cellebrite's claims.

In one of the comments to Schneier's blog post, it was suggested that this was a case of "jump the shark" marketing, a term I had never heard. A little Googling advised me that this is when a company, craving publicity, takes their marketing too far, often causing a backlash.

That sounded entirely plausible.

Hat tip to Dave Ries.

Ride the Lightning will be on sabbatical until January 4. Wishing everyone a joyful and safe holiday! 

Sharon D. Nelson, Esq., President, Sensei Enterprises, Inc.
3975 University Drive, Suite 225|Fairfax, VA 22030
Email: Phone: 703-359-0700
Digital Forensics/Cybersecurity/Information Technology
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