It has been reported that Swedish authorities are pushing for a law allowing backdoors to be embedded into Signal and WhatsApp, so they can access encrypted communications. In response to the news, William Wright, CEO of Closed Door Security, offers his thoughts.

“It’s concerning that authorities from two Western governments have requested backdoors into popular software in the last few weeks. 

“It highlights that neither government fully understands the implications of their requests on the wider public. 

“While it might make things easier for them, it will have detrimental impacts on all the users of the products.

“Building backdoors into software is akin to deliberately building a vulnerability into its infrastructure. 

“Governments know vulnerabilities in products are never a good thing, as they will get discovered and exploited by malicious actors. But with these requests, this is exactly what these authorities are doing. They are asking tech companies to deface the security of their platforms, well aware of the risks to security and safety for all users. 

“As soon as threat actors know the backdoor has been embedded, all their efforts will go into finding and exploiting it. 

“Just look at the recent Salt Typhoon attack for proof. It was apparently executed via a backdoor built into the telcos by the US government, which China then discovered and exploited. 

“The attack ended up putting data belonging to governments, CNI and tech organisations at risk. This highlights the wider impacts backdoors can have on security.

“It’s understandable law enforcement want to track the communications of criminals, but building backdoors into products isn’t the way to do it.

“In the long term, the impacts will hurt millions of innocent citizens, making them much more vulnerable to attacks from cyber criminals and nation state actors wanting to gain information on them.”

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