Confide App Used by White House Staffers Caused Loss of Confidence

Do you get annoyed when you get that storage space full error on your smartphone? So, you spend time deleting old text messages to free up some space. There is an app that allows users to send messages that are erased forever as soon as they are read. Great idea, right? Well, this app, called Confide is also for those who want to have, according to its website, “honest, unfiltered, off-the-record conversations” with friends and colleagues. That is exactly why many White House staffers use it and why it recently made the news for having vulnerabilities. These issues could be exploited and allow someone to impersonate the users, change messages before they make it to the recipients, decrypt messages, and/or see details about the product’s user.

While it doesn’t sound so secure and confidential after all, the researchers who released a report detailing these holes, IOActive, worked with the developers to quickly patch them. In addition, there is no evidence that any of these were exploited.

However, those weren’t the only issues in the product. IOActive also found that the passwords allowed were not required to be strong or long and could be easy to guess. It also did not alert users who were receiving unencrypted messages and it failed to require proof that it was using a secure connection to the server allowing anyone who chose to snoop to do so.

While Confide does boast that it uses military grade cryptography, users shouldn’t put too much weight on that. Security experts caution about taking such claims to heart as secure. That’s because military and government spy agencies already use consumer-based cryptography products and therefore it’s available to anyone to use. The difference is that the key lengths change depending on the desired level of security. So, if anyone can use such products, someone with bad intentions can figure out how to crack it.

According to various reports, White House press secretary Sean Spicer told aides that using such encrypted chat programs violated the Federal Records Act. This was after it was discovered they were used to securely leak information intended for behind closed doors.

So, if you want to avoid having to manually delete your text messages to free up space, this app and others like it may be useful. However, if you work for an organization that relies of confidential communications, do some thorough research before choosing apps with which you want to chat. Even better; have a good old fashioned face-to-face.