Ex-UK National Security Advisor: Signal can be cracked

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00:00Yeah, and I just wanted to ask you in your capacity, Sir Marcus, having been the UK National

00:04Security Advisor, I mean, I'd like to get your opinion on Signal as an application.

00:09You know, is it one that people in the intelligence community, as far as you are aware, regard

00:15as being trustworthy, a safe sort of an application, bearing in mind that an entire handset can

00:23be compromised and therefore even if the app is secure, the phone might not be? What do

00:28you think about the use of Signal?

00:30Well, Signal is a lot more a secure messaging app than, say, text messages or WhatsApp or

00:35something like that, because it does use end-to-end encryption. So it does have quite a lot of

00:40protection and that's why it's become quite a popular messaging app for officials to use.

00:47But that does not mean that it's not vulnerable to hostile attack from more sophisticated

00:52opponents. I mean, the Russians, the Chinese, others, of course, would be able to crack

00:57into these sorts of messages. Now, we don't know whether they did or they didn't, and

01:01it wouldn't have made much difference, perhaps, if they had, given that the attack was on

01:05Yemen. But nonetheless, it is more secure than some, but it is not completely secure.

01:11And I think, as I understand it, the Department of Defence themselves quite recently said

01:16that classified information should not be communicated through the Signal app.