Law enforcement authorities throughout Europe arrested over 800 individuals that allegedly were using an encrypted chat network to coordinate their illicit activities. 60,000 members EncroChat was using modified Android devices to provide its users “worry free secure communications”. BBC reports that EncoChat has about 60,000 users: “An estimated 60,000 people, among them up to 10,000 in Britain, subscribed to France-based EncroChat, which has now been taken down.” Authorities allege that the criminals were using the encrypted messaging service to coordinate illegal activities like the sale of drugs and weapons. However, it is not clear whether they allege that all the …

Russia’s blockchain-based voting system for the constitutional amendments had a vulnerability that reportedly made it possible to decipher votes before the official count. Constituents could decipher their own private keys According to research by Russia-language news outlet Meduza, when the constituents casted their vote via a special website, the results would get encrypted by a JavaScript library called TweetNaCl.js. This is an implementation of the "Networking and Cryptography," or NaCi, cryptography library created by the mathematician Daniel J. Bernstein and cryptographers Tanja Lange and Peter Schwabe. Per Meduza, the voting system relied on the so-called deterministic encryption, meaning that using …

Russia’s decision to lift its two-year Telegram ban is going to mark the beginning of a broader movement to protect privacy-focused apps like Telegram, the company’s CEO says. Pavel Durov, founder and CEO of Telegram, issued a statement in response to Russian authorities officially terminating the ban on the messaging app in the country last week. Telegram’s progress in Russia to help other countries In a June 21 Telegram post, Durov said that the company will not rest on its laurels, and is planning more efforts to support Telegram in other countries like China and Iran. According to Durov, the …

A new protocol says it aims to become the core infrastructure of Next Generation Internet, or NGI, providing a distributed storage environment for large files and delivering end-to-end encryption so the network remains secure at all times. Distributed Storage Protocol Labs, or DSP Labs, says its arrival heralds the next phase of the internet, arguing that the HTTP-based protocol underpinning the web is beset by problems. Even though it would be fashionable to think that internet users have full control over their data, documents and digital identities, DSP Labs asserts that this isn’t the case. Instead, users are in the …

On June 17, the popular video conference app, Zoom, officially announced that end-to-end encryption, or E2EE, has finally arrived for their software. It will be provided to both free and paid users, so long as their account has passed the company’s verification process. According to the announcement, during the beta phase that will start from July, users should verify their phone numbers via a text message. The aim of this step is to prevent the mass creation of abusive accounts. Zoom commented: “We are confident that by implementing risk-based authentication, in combination with our current mix of tools - including …

Zoom, the video conference app whose popularity has rocketed on the back of the global lockdown, won’t be encrypting calls for free users. This way, the company hopes to create space for collaboration with the FBI and other authorities, Zoom CEO Eric Yuan said during a June 2 conference call. According to Yuan, Zoom’s end-to-end encryption service, which is currently under development, will be available exclusively for corporate clients to prevent bad actors from using the app: “Free users for sure we don’t want to give that because we also want to work together with FBI, with local law enforcement …

A major state authority in Russia has objected to the State Duma’s proposal to cancel the ban on Telegram’s encrypted messenger in the country. Russia’s Ministry of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media, also known as MinComSvyaz, doesn’t support a recent initiative to lift the two-year-long Telegram ban, local news agency Interfax reports May 26. Russia doesn’t need more services to spread information about COVID-19 On April 22, two deputies at the State Duma proposed a draft bill on terminating the ban of Telegram in Russia due to the coronavirus outbreak. The proposal stipulates that Telegram has become an “official …

After years of unsuccessful efforts to block Telegram in Russia, the country’s government is now considering lifting the ban due to the coronavirus outbreak. According to an April 22 report by Russian news agency Kommersant, two deputies at the State Duma have prepared a draft bill on terminating the ban of Telegram’s encrypted messenger app in Russia. If you can’t beat it, join it In the bill, the State Duma deputies reportedly argued that Telegram has become an “official service” used by state authorities to raise awareness about the measures to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic. The officials elaborated that local …

Currently, one of the most rigorously examined corners of the surging cryptography space, secure multiparty computation, or sMPC, is widely considered a viable solution to many practical situations in the real world. The concept has some promising implications ranging from privacy to scalability and efficiency, and it’s lasting impact lay outside the purview of only blockchain technology. However, many crypto and blockchain platforms are among the early pioneers in actively applying the technology to finance, advertising, insurance and other industries. “The beauty of multi-party protocols is that they use a rich body of tools and sub-protocols, some of which have …

Back in the 2000s, when I worked for PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), I was the director of technology and innovation. Part of that role was not only helping the company and some of our clients with tech innovation projects, but it was looking out five years, 10 years, 15 years and thinking about what technology was emerging and what it might mean for our industry. And so, all along the way, I’ve had a real interest in identifying things that are interesting that maybe a lot of people weren’t paying attention to yet. One was the role of speech recognition. I was …

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is attempting to alert the public to a bill that seeks to end the encryption of online messages and prevent it from being enacted by the United States Congress. The so-called EARN IT bill proposes that digital messages should first pass through government-approved scanning software in order to monitor for malicious criminal activity. The bill is sponsored by Senators Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal. Blockchain as a measure against government surveillance The bill’s disregard for privacy presents an open-ended use case for technology like blockchain. By offering transparency and traceability alongside security, blockchain-based communications may …

It has been nearly seven years since Edward Snowden blew the whistle on highly classified global surveillance programs, inciting a national conversation about privacy in the digital age. One of these revelations was that the NSA had access to the email content of Google users and the ability to map anyone’s cell phone location. It’s now been two years since the Cambridge Analytica scandal came to light, revealing that the company had harvested Facebook user data and used it to manipulate for the United States presidential election. In 2018, Facebook also admitted that it let Netflix and Spotify access users’ …