23 December 2024

US government tells officials, politicians to ditch regular calls and texts

Raphael Satter and A.J. Vicens

The U.S. government is urging senior government officials and politicians to ditch phone calls and text messages following intrusions at major American telecommunications companies blamed on Chinese hackers.

Right now.

In written guidance, opens new tab released on Wednesday, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said "individuals who are in senior government or senior political positions" should "immediately review and apply" a series of best practices around the use of mobile devices.

The first recommendation: "Use only end-to-end encrypted communications."

End-to-end encryption - a data protection technique which aims to make data unreadable by anyone except its sender and its recipient - is baked into various chat apps, including Meta Platforms' (META.O), opens new tab WhatsApp, Apple's (AAPL.O), opens new tab iMessage, and the privacy-focused app Signal. Corporate offerings which allow end-to-end encryption also include Microsoft's (MSFT.O), opens new tab Teams and Zoom Communications' (ZM.O), opens new tab online meetings.

Neither regular phone calls nor text messages are end-to-end encrypted, which means they can be monitored, either by the telephone companies, law enforcement, or - potentially - hackers who've broken into the phone companies' infrastructure.

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