As top Trump cabinet members sent texts in a Signal group chat, CBS News analysis shows one of them, Steve Witkoff, was in Russia.
  • Sanctus@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2241·
    9 days ago

    Looks like Russia won the ideological war and will be exporting authoritarianism to the globe.

    • 9point6@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1481·
      9 days ago

      The main thing to remember about authoritarians is that none have ever been documented to be impervious to small pieces of metal moving at high speed.

    • IninewCrow@lemmy.caEnglish
      601·
      9 days ago

      This isn’t a nationalist idea … the oligarchs have won and are exporting authoritarianism to the globe. Most or the majority of people everywhere just want to have a peaceful life whether they are in the US, Russian, China or anywhere on the globe … it’s oligarchs and wealthy morons that think they can manipulate everyone, everywhere all the time and allow them to become rulers of the universe.

      • skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
        14·
        9 days ago

        i’ll have you know that social contract that formed in russia after 90s looks just like that: citizens fuck off from politics in return for some prosperity. every time when russian state expected that that won’t last due to things like 2008 crisis or covid or what have you, they started a war as a distraction and to rally around the flag some nationalists. now they’re on 4th attempt, this one was due to post-covid recession. difference is, this time they were high on their own supply of propaganda and planned accordingly. they also can’t back down because they see it as a weakness, and that would mean a coup

    • cm0002@lemmy.worldEnglish
      103·
      9 days ago

      Nahhhh according to the tankies of .ml, Russia is just trying to export humanity-saving peace, love and socialism but has just been continuously beaten down by the big bad US :(

  • Teknikal@eviltoast.orgEnglish
    1387·
    9 days ago

    Love the way THE BBC is trying to make signal sound like some hackers playset, really shows how much the UK gov hate encryption or people having any privacy at all.

      • booly@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        731·
        9 days ago

        You use Signal to avoid government surveillance.

        I use Signal to avoid government accountability.

        We are not the same.

      • Teknikal@eviltoast.orgEnglish
        7·
        9 days ago

        Well I use it and have put it on relatives phones so they can communicate with me easily, ideally though I’d use Threema but yeah signals a lot better than other free alternatives.

          • Uniquitous@lemmy.oneEnglish
            51·
            8 days ago

            Less. If someone has root privs on your phone they can screenshot without your notice and send those shots wherever they want, encryption or self-deleting messaging apps be damned.

              • Uniquitous@lemmy.oneEnglish
                31·
                8 days ago

                I mean, they provide the operating system and push updates to your phone via a trusted channel, so yeah you’re kinda extending them 100% trust already. I’m more thinking about malware authors here though; criminals or governments (or criminal governments) slipping shady shit onto your phone without your noticing.

          • GoodEye8@lemm.eeEnglish
            10·
            8 days ago

            Because it’s largely irrelevant? If someone says “This is the best lock you can use on your front door” and someone else replies “not if you leave the key in the lock” do you think that’s a important thing to mention? No lock is safe if you leave the key in the lock. Maybe it’s important to remind people that you shouldn’t leave your key in the lock, but that statement says nothing about the security of the lock.

            Similarly maybe it’s important to remind people that their phones might already be rooted, but that statement says nothing about whether Signal is good or bad from a security point of view.

    • quack@lemmy.zipEnglish
      11·
      8 days ago

      The UK is an utter shithole when it comes to privacy, always has been. It doesn’t look to be getting better any time soon either.

      • PaleRider@feddit.ukEnglish
        19·
        9 days ago

        No.

        Graham Fraser: Technology reporter.

        Signal, compared with other messaging apps, has added security features to protect the privacy of its users. Conversations on the app are end-to-end encrypted, which means they can only be read by the recipients. Signal can’t even read what has been sent. But security is only as good as the person using it.

        Link

      • Teknikal@eviltoast.orgEnglish
        53·
        9 days ago

        Isn’t hard to look up the BBC site, their pretty much making signal sound like an insecure hacking tool only used by dissidents.

    • Tiger666@lemmy.caEnglish
      324·
      9 days ago

      Are you just figuring that out now? Attacking all its allies is what did it for me.

      The US is a captured state now, and there are only a few ways out; voting is not one of them.

      • oppy1984@lemm.eeEnglish
        181·
        9 days ago

        Welcome to the party pal, most of us knew it was traitor town when “Russia if your listening” was said on national TV.

  • octopus_ink@slrpnk.netEnglish
    1002·
    9 days ago

    Independently verifiable detail number 28543 showing that Trump and everyone he has appointed are unfit for office, and that no one who voted for him will ever care about, and from which no consequences will ever flow.

    I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters. – Mr. Donald J. Trump

    • floquant@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      186·
      9 days ago

      Could everyone please stop repeating “nothing will ever come of this” every time fucked up shit happens?

      • octopus_ink@slrpnk.netEnglish
        16·
        9 days ago

        Man I don’t have enough time in the day to be doing that.

        I save my cynical outbursts for when he gets caught. And I have reasons, though you may not agree with them.

        I think it’s important not to lose sight of the fact that our government is incapable of dispensing consequences to this man, regardless of what he does, regardless of where his loyalties clearly lie, regardless of how he continually works at the destruction of the United States of America. So we’re not surprised at where things are four years from Jan 21 like we were four years from Jan 06.

        While we are all tempted by the complacent comfort of “someone in government will handle it” now that he’s actually at the peak of his power, it seems key that we all remember “no one in government handled it” for four years when he was out of power and arguably at his weakest.

  • orbituary@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    673·
    9 days ago

    That encryption is not impenetrable, however, and the Google Threat Intelligence Group warned just last month of “increasing efforts from several Russia state-aligned threat actors to compromise Signal Messenger accounts used by individuals of interest to Russia’s intelligence services.”

    This is somewhat disingenuous. Signal can’t be directly cracked. Only access to the phone directly or via mirroring can expose it. The article somewhat explains this.

    I am in no way whatsoever excusing the actions of these douche-chalupas. I prefer accuracy in my reporting, though. That said, Witkoff in Russia may as well have been a direct line to Putin.

    • Rentlar@lemmy.caEnglish
      511·
      9 days ago

      The most uncrackable encryption can be defeated by Steven Witkoff sitting on Putin’s lap while reading the messages.

    • empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      281·
      9 days ago

      This seems a bit too nitpicky tbh.
      The author is correct, Signal is not “perfect”, because the weakest link is always the endpoint device and the end user. Which is kind of the whole point of this article; The issue is not that Signal was used, as it’s reasonably secure, it’s that the people using it are not secure at all.

      • orbituary@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        10·
        9 days ago

        Oh, I’m definitely picking nits. I agree and said as much in my last comment. But the way the article presented it made it feel like there is a clear and present danger from Chinese and Russian threat actors against the protocol.

        • AtHeartEngineer@lemmy.worldEnglish
          4·
          9 days ago

          Right, those shouldn’t be conflated (the protocols vs the phone/persons security properties).I think anyone actively targeted by a major govt power is probably fucked though. Pegasus has taught us that, so while signal is probably a pretty secure protocol, phones definitely have a lot of vulnerabilities.

        • einkorn@feddit.orgEnglish
          2·
          9 days ago

          OK, my time to pick nits: There is a clear and present threat. China, Russia and certainly the US as well have teams of cryptographers looking at software such as Signal and analysing every update and change made in order to spot potential openings. The threat towards Signal however is comparatively small because there are tens if not hundreds of times as many people checking the code as well and reporting back to Signal because of its Open-source nature.

          • orbituary@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            1·
            9 days ago

            That’s exactly my point. I work in security, specifically versus threat actors. I don’t typically deal with State actors, but on occasion I do. Those are the real problem.

            You’re writing the concerns, suggestions, and warnings I would give.

          • CalipherJones@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            9 days ago

            As far as I’m aware the encryption can’t really be broken given the current amount of compute. Is anyone aware of what potential vulnerabilities there could be to the Signal protocol outside of brute forcing? How hard is it to crack a private public key exchange?

            • Caedarai@reddthat.comEnglish
              1·
              8 days ago

              One of the biggest issues is they can be recorded and potentially decrypted in the future once quantum computing attacks become feasible. At the moment, the cryptography in Signal (or similar) has no known vulnerabilities that would make it vulnerable to practical attacks given reasonable assumptions about the technology that exists in the world at the moment.

      • IsoKiero@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        2·
        9 days ago

        people using it are not secure at all.

        And this is very much not limited just to signal. No matter what software, protocol or any other way you use to communicate, both you and the receiving entity/entities are the weakest link by a long shot. I don’t expect even my closest friends to hold our everyday conversations secret if for whatever reason their wellbeing was threated in any way. And even if I did there’s always other options, like targeted social engineering, to get trough pretty much any reasonable safety concerns on digital communication.

        Of course in everyday life if our chat histories were publicly available it would not be too big of an issue, but it’s still something worth keeping on mind when interacting over any digital or any other written medium.

    • Mouselemming@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      41·
      9 days ago

      Given the rest of their behavior I’m seeing that chat member leaning across the lunch table towards Putin’s secretary, holding out his phone: “hey look, we’re just about to bomb Yemen!”

    • corsicanguppy@lemmy.caEnglish
      31·
      9 days ago

      may as well have been a direct line to Putin.

      Was Mr Putin over his shoulder at the crucial moment, or just a state-run high-def camera?

    • fitgse@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      21·
      9 days ago

      But it isn’t that hard to create a signal account with the name of someone high in the US ranks and send a request to these people. They are too dumb to actually validate the key of the person.

      Encryption can’t handle when the encrypt with a foe’s key and send that for the message.

  • mechoman444@lemmy.worldEnglish
    531·
    8 days ago

    I’m sure that everyone, including trump will feel the full force of the law. The FBI will immediately investigate make arrest and punish everyone involved in this blatant act of anti-patriotism and treason.

    Right?

        • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
          12·
          8 days ago

          Or even during. People think about Louis XVI getting chopped, but never the people who did the chopping getting chopped x4. And then, yes, Louis XVIII.

          The real fruits of the revolution were from the seeds it planted blooming decades later in the Victorian era. Living through it just sounds like it sucked. They were a generation of martyrs for a liberal democratic future they barely got to see the beginnings of.

  • Floon@lemmy.mlEnglish
    35·
    8 days ago

    If the GOP had an iota, a molecule, a QUARK of integrity, the cabinet would be impeached en masse. They are a disaster.

    • HugeNerd@lemmy.caEnglish
      8·
      8 days ago

      It’s almost incomprehensible. This is historical, it will be in history books in a hundred years.

  • Jonathan Snyder@discuss.onlineEnglish
    291·
    8 days ago

    I’m shocked…but I’m also not shocked. This has gotten to the point that you think they can’t one up themselves and then they go and do it.

  • Klutzikaze@reddthat.comEnglish
    26·
    9 days ago

    I’m looking forward to anyone using the word ‘signal’ around trump being suspected of mocking him.

    Sensitive egotistical maniacs are so much fun to placate.