Unveiling the Inner Workings of the Telemessage Drama and Guidance on Accessing the Data
In a startling turn of events, a supposedly secure messaging app used by White House officials, TeleMessage, has experienced a significant data breach. The incident, which led to a massive 410GB database dump of communications, can be traced back to TeleMessage's design choice to back up messages on their server, a decision that inadvertently exposed sensitive communications due to poor operational security and insufficient protection of these backups.
Security researcher Micah Lee was instrumental in uncovering this breach. After discovering the TeleMessage Android source code, hidden away but accessible, Lee was able to analyze the app’s mechanism and trace back messages stored in an unencrypted or weakly protected backup database. This leak happened despite TeleMessage positioning itself as a secure messaging client akin to Signal.
The breach reflects a broader pattern of operational security failures. The use of a Signal clone (TeleMessage) seemed intended to combine end-to-end encryption with archival compliance, but the backup mechanism was never properly secured against unauthorized access. This incident serves as a stark reminder of the risks of storing supposedly secure communications in central backups without strong safeguards.
The breach originated from TeleMessage's design choice to back up every message to a SQLite database via HTTPS, a choice made ostensibly to comply with the US Federal Records Act. Lee found that the messages were easy to find by repeatedly looking on and running the command line tool .
In a troubling twist, a hacker working on the TeleMessage app sent Lee a data dump from one of TeleMessage's customers, the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), including 780 emails of CBP officers. Lee's analysis of the Android source code of TeleMessage, which was published on their website, revealed that the app had hardcoded credentials stored for a WordPress API. Many of the JSON objects found contained plain text messages.
This incident underscores the importance of robust security measures in the handling of sensitive data. As technology continues to evolve, it is crucial that companies prioritise the protection of their users' communications, particularly in instances where those communications may involve high-level government officials.
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