FOSSPicks
FOSSPicks
Nate explores the top FOSS including a starship bridge simulator, an offline translator, a stateless password manager, and a de-googled version of Chromium.
Backdoors for All
As I was leafing through the latest "Crypto-Gram" newsletter, I found author Bruce Schneier's take on the recent showdown between Apple and the UK government. In brief, the UK tried using its draconian laws to have Apple secretly place a backdoor in its iCloud ADP (Advanced Data Protection). Rather than compromise its end-to-end encryption, Apple disabled the feature altogether in the country.
Security experts point out that backdoors can also be accessed by the bad guys, as evidenced by the recent Salt Typhoon hack of US telecoms systems designed to facilitate court-ordered wire tapping. Apple was also issued a gag order not to reveal the UK government's demands. It's only thanks to a whistleblower leaking the story to The Washington Post that we know about it.
Other companies offering proprietary encryption products can also be subjected to secret subpoenas. This can expose sensitive data – not just to law enforcement but to threat actors such as foreign hacking groups. While it's technically feasible to backdoor open source software, the code is regularly reviewed for security bugs by the community. When it comes to secure messaging, choose FOSS options such as Signal. If you need to back up your data, Nextcloud also supports verifiable end-to-end encryption.
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