They have similar end result for the phone in question, but headlines like this can lead to people being less secure on the whole.
Arguing this point at all is silly when many people, even many IT professionals don't know and don't care about the difference between bypassed and broken. This arguing detracts from the important news...
The CIA sees fit to ignore the security of Americans by not alerting the companies that make the software the CIA exploits. They do this to insure they can hack whoever they want, and there is no meaningful oversight and no ethical, economic or constitutional consideration.
I wonder what this administration will do with this knowledge. It will be interesting to see trump respond too, rather than manufacture news.
If group with the massive funding and pervasive reach like the CIA can operate with impunity it does not matter what app or what security you think you have.
The fine distinction of one app being singled out sucks, but it really is small potatoes here. The owner of the app should write the NYT and complain that their app was used inappropriately or perhaps write an editorial to get even more free advertising. The real news is that the CIA lied to Americans and the President so they could continue damaging American businesses, in the name of protecting America.
It sounds like we are not too far off from the CIA being able to write self spreading malware that allows monitoring they just haven't because... maybe it would be too easy to spot. Oh wait groups like the CIA did this already and rigged it to delete itself when not on one of their intended target's machines, stuxnet.
Pending that, here is evidence of a counter claim. I'd repeat what tptacek said, but he's whittled it down better than I could: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13811541
To cite Tony Arcieri, the only elite cryptanalysis trick in play here is "Android is a tire fire". Cue surprised gasp from security researchers.
Furthermore, you did not refute my central claim. Popping a Cisco 12k: read a bunch of unencrypted comms until detection. Target a specific person to get bit by a specific iOS exploit: maybe read some of the data until it gets patched. Surely you'll agree that one is drastically more expensive than the other?
> dozens of "zero day" weaponized exploits against a wide range of U.S. and European company products, include Apple's iPhone, Google's Android and Microsoft's Windows
The only presumption on my part is that they are remotely exploitable, which is practically a requirement for mobile device exploits to be useful because physical access is hard to obtain. I do plan on going further through these, they look fun.
Of course encrypted communication is better for the user than unencrypted, but this is not the place for that, which is why I ignored it. This was supposed to be a discussion about massive government overreach, not petty squabbles between apps. With unfettered access to these phones there are all manner of hypothetical attacks that could go after any of these app providers and not just snoop on the communications of the users. With root access to a large number of phones and little oversight their capacity for harm is frightening, this seems more worthy of discussion.
It does mean Signal is pointless to use however. Why encrypt if your communications are picked up prior to encryption? Akin to putting your seat belt on after the car has crashed.
Defense in depth! Do you stop using TLS on your banking website every time a Windows 0day comes out?
So in that case switching to something less secure will instantly make your problems worse.
Yes, catastrophic compromise is possible, but that does not render all security measures moot. A precious few attackers have the capability for such attacks, they are very costly to develop and therefore very precious and well kept secrets, to be used on high profile targets.
Unless you are a spy, a terrorist, a state official with significant power or a dissident against the likes of Russia or China, end-to-end encryption like Signal will keep your communication private.
Maybe, if one person can do it so can others. It would be foolish to assume you are safe just because the US government doesn't deem you a person of interest. It might be far fetched, but now that the world knows it's possible to bypass encryption you cannot ignore the fact that Signal may not work at all.
This is the point of the majority of propaganda, really: it's not to convince the people who know anything about the issue; it's to prejudice the people who don't, so that it'll be harder for the people in the know to communicate the facts to them.
Also, if you these people read only the title, then the problem is not any sort of text, you should fix those people first. No matter what words were chosen they will most likely make the wrong judgment.