The WhatsApp messaging service has been banned on all US Home of Representatives gadgets, in keeping with a memo despatched to Home workers on Monday.
The discover to all Home workers mentioned that the “Office of Cybersecurity has deemed WhatsApp a high-risk to users due to the lack of transparency in how it protects user data, absence of stored data encryption, and potential security risks involved with its use.”
The memo, from the chief administrative officer, advisable use of different messaging apps, together with Microsoft Corp’s Groups platform, Amazon.com’s Wickr, Sign, Apple’s iMessage, and Facetime.
Meta, which owns WhatsApp, didn’t instantly reply to a Reuters request for remark.
The Sign app – which like Whatsapp makes use of end-to-end encrypted messaging – was on the heart of a current controversy during which Pete Hegseth, the protection secretary, despatched detailed details about deliberate assaults on Yemen to at the least two non-public Sign group chats.
One of many chats was created by Mike Waltz, the nationwide safety adviser, and included prime US safety officers in addition to, inadvertently, the Atlantic journal journalist Jeffrey Goldberg. The opposite Hegseth created himself, together with his spouse, his brother and a couple of dozen different folks.
The Pentagon had beforehand warned its workers towards utilizing Sign as a result of a technical vulnerability, in accordance NPR, which reported that an “OPSEC special bulletin” seen by its reporters and despatched on 18 March mentioned that Russian hacking teams might exploit the vulnerability in Sign to spy on encrypted organizations, probably focusing on “persons of interest”.
The Pentagon-wide memo mentioned “third party messaging apps” like Sign are permitted for use to share unclassified info, however they don’t seem to be allowed for use to ship “non-public” unclassified info.
Reuters contributed to this report.
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