Police decrypt messages after breaking pricey IronChat crypto app
I know nothing about the IronChat service, but if what is shown in that archived page is the real device then it&#x27;s pretty obvious that it was doomed to be cracked. A cellphone? Seriously... a freaking cellphone?<p>Cellphones -all of them- use binary closed blobs to manage device drivers, and to date there is not a single cellphone in the known universe which is free of proprietary closed code. That includes also the Librem5, which is a wonderful step in the right direction, still not completely free of closed blobs, hence not secure.<p>So what&#x27;s the problem with (closed) device drivers? Well, they run all the time, they run at maximum privileges (higher than root) and they cannot be audited to spot any malicious code, which makes them the most effective place to hide spyware code. If any government tells a hardware manufacturer to &quot;put our spyware into your driver or your business ends tomorrow&quot; they comply, nobody can spot the code and there&#x27;s no anti malware software that will detect it.<p>But why one should care if all text is end-to-end encrypted? Well, on a bugged phone there&#x27;s no such thing as safe encryption. Let me be more clear: if you tap the text on the virtual keyboard or any device connected to say the USB port or through bluetooth, the text is read by the relevant drivers (higher priority, closed, not auditable) <i>before</i> it reaches the encryption code (lower priority user app) then it can be stored, transmitted (network drivers are closed too) etc. Closed device drivers can be used on most platforms (including PCs) to build a covert channel where information (text, sound, images etc.) travels completely unbeknownst to the user, so a platform can&#x27;t be considered as secure until every single bit of software and firmware contained can be checked.<p>So, how did the police decrypt that traffic? I can only speculate that they confiscated one of these devices, then built a bugged driver for some vital devices within it, then got to the manufacturer and forced them to inject that tampered driver as an online update for that given model of phone, possibly installing only if some conditions were verified to be sure it was one of the targets.<p>If that scenario is half true, then there is not a single piece of computer hardware in the world one can safely assume to be secure. An Arduino-like board, maybe, until the day they&#x27;ll build faster ones around bigger chips carrying closed blobs inside.