Russia-Ukraine war: Signal says hack claims part of 'coordinated misinformation campaign'

Amidst the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, the popular instant messaging platform Signal has clarified that it is not compromised. While the usage of Signal in Eastern Europe has increased in the past few days, misinformation about the application is surfacing over the internet. Signal calls it a "coordinated misinformation campaign" that is meant to encourage people to use less secure messaging platforms. 

"We're seeing these rumors appear in messages forwarded on several different apps. These rumors are often attributed to official government sources and read 'attacks on Signal platform.' This is false and Signal is not under attack, (sic)" Signal mentioned in a tweet.

The tweet was published on 1 March 2022, at 04:48 AM IST. As rightfully pointed out by Signal, the aim of such messages is to spread misinformation in crucial times. 

Mathew Prince, the co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare has recently shared an image that shows that usage of Signal has surpassed other popular applications such as Telegram and WhatsApp in Eastern Europe, especially between February 27 and February 28, 2022. Have a look at the image shared by Prince below, which showcases the usage of Signal with respect to other applications.

Why is it important to communicate via a safe application?

It is important to know that in the technological era, every physical war is accompanied by cyberattacks. Additionally, spreading misinformation is yet another tactic used to confuse the global audience. In this case, discrediting an encrypted messaging application and speaking rumours about the app may misguide users into using other applications for communication that are less safe. It is from the less safe applications that bad actors will be able to extract crucial information. 

This goes for both the regular users and the government officials of a country under attack. Using non-encrypted messaging platforms such as Messenger and Telegram might compromise the information. Instead, users should rely on end-to-end encrypted platforms such as WhatsApp or Signal. However, Ukrainians should understand that they are fighting a nation that is perfectly capable of hacking into mobile devices, rendering the E2E encryption useless.