A new era of encryption attacks begins to heat up

In the last decade, encrypted communication has become the norm for billions of people. Every day, SignalImessage and WhatsApp saves billions of messages, photos, videos and calls on personal End -to -end encryption By default – while the increase, discord and various other services have options to activate protection. But despite the main rise in technology, Long -standing threats To weaken encryption, continue to accumulate.

In the last few months, there has been a leap in the efforts of the government and law enforcement, which would undermine encryption effectively, say privacy and experts, with some of the threats being the dumb and aggressive of those in recent memory. Officials in the UK, France and Sweden have all taken moves from the beginning of 2025 that could undermine or eliminate encryption protection from the end, adding to a perennial plan of the European Union to Scan private chats and Indian efforts that could harm encryptionS

These latest encryption attacks come as intelligence agencies and law enforcement officers in the United States have recently been gave for years of attitudes against tension And now we recommend that people use encrypted communication platforms when they can. The drastic change in attitude followed the widespread violation of the Hacker Group of Salt Typhoon Main American telecommunicationsAnd it comes when Trump’s second administration strengthens the potential monitoring of millions of undocumented migrants living in the United States. At the same time the administration is a strain A long, decisive international intelligence sharing Agreements and partnerships.

“The trend is gloomy,” says Carmela Tronkoso, a longtime researcher of confidentiality and cryptography and a scientific director at the Max Plank Security and Privacy Institute in Germany. “We see these new policies appear as mushrooms trying to undermine encryption.”

End-to-end encryption is designed, so only the sender and the recipient of the messages have access to their content-governments, technology companies and telecommunications suppliers cannot put up with what people say. These confidentiality and security guarantees have made encryption the target for law enforcement and governments for decadesBecause employees claim the defense does it It has been difficult To investigate emergency threats as a material for sexual abuse of children and terrorism.

As a result, governments around the world often offer technical mechanisms to bypass encryption and allow access to investigative messages. Cryptographers and technologists repeatedly and finally warn that someone backward Created to access encrypted communications from end to end can be operated by hackers or authoritarian governments, compromising everyone’s safety. In addition, criminals are likely to find ways to continue using self -made encryption tools to cover up their messages, which means that the background in the main products will be able to undermine the protection for the public without eliminating its use by bad actors.

Overall, recent encryption threats have come in three forms, says Namra Mahevari, the leading International non -profit encryption policy now. First, there are those in which governments or law enforcement authorities want to be built into encrypted platforms to gain “legal access” to content. At the end of February, for example, Apple pulled Its encrypted iCloud backup system called Extended data protectionOut of use in the UK following the country’s legislators According to messages Strike Cupertino with a secret order requesting Apple to provide access to encrypted files. Apple should create a rear door to do this. The order that has been criticized by the Trump administration is intended to be challenged in a A secret hearing on March 14S