Popular messaging apps fail EFF's security review

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://news.techworld.com/security/3584204/popular-messaging-apps-fail-effs-security-review/

By Lucian Constantin
Techworld.com
04 November 2014

Some of the most widely used messaging apps in the world, including Google 
Hangouts, Facebook chat, Yahoo Messenger and Snapchat, flunked a 
best-practices security test by advocacy group the Electronic Frontier 
Foundation (EFF).

The organization evaluated 39 messaging products based on seven criteria 
it believes such tools should meet in order to ensure the privacy and 
security of digital communications.

The reviewed products included mobile texting apps, instant messaging 
clients, voice and video calling software and email services. The results 
were published Tuesday under the form of a Secure Messaging Scorecard.

The EFF did not perform vulnerability assessments or in-depth technical 
analyses of the encryption implementations in the reviewed products. 
Instead it judged them based on principles and features it felt are 
necessary to protect communications from widespread Internet surveillance 
by governments, which includes data collection in transit or from online 
service providers.

[...]



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