Germany’s federal interior minister, Horst Seehofer, wants companies such as WhatsApp and Telegram to give security authorities access to end-to-end encrypted messages or calls. Not complying with this could end with companies being banned by the Federal Network Agency.
The latest issue of Der Spiegel reports that Seehofer wants the order to be implemented quickly, especially with the move to 5G potentially causing “complications” for security authorities. This comes after WhatsApp had to fix its app due to a remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability, which may have been exploited by a national-state.
As Infosecurity reported at the time, the Facebook-owned mobile communication giant, with 1.5 billion users, rolled out a fix on the vulnerability that allowed users to be infected with spyware by being phoned by the attacker.