Facebook’s encrypted messaging platform “WhatsApp” gained a user in Congress this week thanks to the revelation that global intelligence agencies have potentially unfettered access to cellular data around the world.
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The vulnerability, which is enabled by newly-revealed cracks in a cellular network known as Signaling System No. 7, was widely publicized by California Rep. Ted Lieu during a Sunday broadcast of the CBS program “60 Minutes.” Lieu, who graduated from Stanford with a degree in computer science, also sits on the House Oversight Subcommittee on Information Technology.
“After the 60 Minutes episode aired, I downloaded WhatsApp,” Lieu told the Washington Examiner on Thursday. “Until the SS7 flaw is fixed, encryption is a good mitigation measure. If someone uses end-to-end encryption for text messages, that effectively mitigates this flaw.”
The vulnerability allows any party with access to the SS7 network to access the contents of any device, provided they know the connected phone number. That includes files, the audio of voice calls, and locational data. However, text messages may be protected if they are sent using end-to-end encryption.
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“I am very aware now that whatever I say on my cellphone, someone in Russia or China could be listening in on me,” said Lieu, who is calling for a congressional investigation. “I’d like to know the scope of the problem, what the ramifications are if we don’t fix the problem, and what steps we can take to mitigate the problem until it is fixed.”
“You can imagine all of the possible ways this could negatively affect national security and the global economy, and the lives of ordinary people,” Lieu said. “This flaw has huge implications. You can imagine that if a foreign government or hackers had a cellphone number for executives of a company, they could get inside information and execute stock trades based on that. There are so many nefarious uses from getting inside the cellphone conversations of hundreds of millions of cellphones. This is a massive flaw that needs to be addressed.”
