In an age of ever more sophisticated cybercrime and mass surveillance secure communication is an increasingly rare premium commodity. In this talk we take a look at how the threat model for secure messaging applications has evolved beyond the traditional man-in-the-middle attacker.
We will cover new goals and capabilities of attackers targeting modern communications networks. We will also look at several classes of attacks many of which are already being used effectively in the wild. For these, we will cover the capabilities needed to launch the attack, the effects successful execution can entail.
Some of the real world attacks/vulnerabilities we will touch upon are:
- The account enumeration and hijacking of Telegram accounts in Iran.
- Detecting the language in encrypted text messages.
- Recovering the content of encrypted VoiP conversations.
- HipChat server compromise leading to leak of meta-data and chat logs.
- Invisible rekeying on WhatsApp.
- Widespread lack of even basic privacy in the face of future quantum attacks.
- Browser based attacks on WhatsApp and Telegram.
- iMessage protocol attack