CyberNews - Secure Messaging Apps

  

CyberNews looked at 13 messaging apps and found that "nearly all of your messaging apps are secure".

The messaging apps they reviewed were:

    Signal
    Wickr Me
    Messenger
    WhatsApp
    Telegram
    Wire
    Viber
    Cyber Dust
    iMessage
    Pryvate
    Qtox
    Session
    Briar

The key results of their analysis was:

2 of the messaging apps were not secure by default, and users will have to turn on this security in the settings

4 of the secure messaging apps use the industry-trusted Signal Protocol for encryption

Only two of the apps use P2P for their transport mechanism

iMessage does not encrypt messages if they are sent through GSM (used for 2G and 3G)

3 out of 13 applications have paid plans that allow more users to access extra features

Most of the applications use RSA and AES, some of the most secure encryption algorithms available today, for encryption and key hashes

Suffice it to say: none of these apps offer absolute security, and none ever will, since there will always be a workaround by a person or a group with enough time and resources. Even if an app were absolutely secure in and of itself, it wouldn’t be able to mitigate your mistakes. As Telegram’s FAQ nicely puts it:

“We cannot protect you from your own mother if she takes your unlocked phone without a passcode. Or from your IT-department if they access your computer at work. Or from any other people that get physical or root access to your phones or computers running Telegram.”

If you behave unsecurely, no secure messaging app will save you.

Read the complete article here.