In the last few hours, a messaging application has started to make a lot of noise, leading to questions about virtual security and the functioning of the government of the United States. This is Signal, which has piqued the curiosity of many after a journalist said he had been added to a group chat where secret military plans and official country plans were being discussed.
The editor-in-chief of The Atlantic magazine, Jeffrey Goldberg, made headlines after reporting that he had been added to a group chat on Signal just hours before the attacks on Houthi rebels in Yemen. There, as he recounted, U.S. national security officials were discussing the details of those attacks.
What is Signal and how does it work?
Signal is less known than other messaging applications in the market, such as WhatsApp and Meta’s Messenger or the iMessage app integrated into the iPhone. However, its service is practically the same: a way to chat with contacts through secure channels.
The application can be used for direct messaging and group chats, as well as for phone calls and video calls. Like others of its kind, Signal uses end-to-end encryption for its messaging and calling services, which prevents third parties from viewing the content of conversations or listening to calls.
The Signal encryption protocol is open-source, which means that anyone can inspect it, use it, or modify it. This protocol is also part of another popular chat service, the WhatsApp platform owned by the social media company Meta.
Government officials have used Signal for organizational communication. For example, in the Biden administration, individuals who were granted permission to download it on their phones issued by the White House were instructed to use the app in moderation, according to a former national security official who worked in the Administration as told to The Independent.
The origins of the application date back to more than a decade ago, when it was created by entrepreneur Moxie Marlinspike. Marlinspike had briefly been the head of product security at Twitter after selling his mobile security company to the social media company. The entrepreneur then merged two existing open-source applications, one for text messaging and the other for voice calls, to create Signal.