In the virtual world, few things are as challenging as dealing with the fallout from Elon Musk’s controversial tweets.
In May, Musk tweeted that encrypted messaging app Signal had a “known vulnerability.” Signal president Meredith Whittaker told Wired that she spent “two sleepless nights just dealing with the Twitter stuff.”
Musk initially endorsed the app in 2021 with a two-word tweet: “Use Signal.”
“He’s a big fan of Musk. So I don’t know what’s changed,” Whittaker said. “All I know is, to the best of our knowledge, the claims are completely baseless.” He added that there was no “serious reporting” to support Musk’s claims.
Signal is considered more secure than most messaging apps because of its “end-to-end encryption,” which encodes a sender’s message so that only the intended recipient’s device can decrypt it. The platform’s code is also open-source, which the company says underscores its focus on privacy. “We work openly, document our thinking, and make our code open-source and open to scrutiny—so you don’t have to take our word for it,” according to a blog post from Signal.
Musk’s comments, however, come amid a wave of criticism of the app. Around that time, Pavel Durov, CEO of rival app Telegram, also criticized Signal, saying it was not a secure option for private messaging and that “the US government spent $3 million building Signal’s encryption.”
According to Wired, there are also figures in the “hacker world” who are proposing a better, more “obscure and ultra-secure” messaging platform.
Whittaker dismissed the claims, telling the outlet that it was “very disappointing to me to see that kind of discourse.” For those who can’t verify the validity of claims against Signal — which, Whittaker said, is 99% of its users — such comments can cause real security concerns. “It’s a matter of life or death.”