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Elon Musk's tweet in May about Signal's vulnerabilities sparked widespread outrage against the app.
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Meredith Whittaker, Signal's CEO, denied Musk's claims, calling them baseless.
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Criticism from Telegram's CEO and the hacker community exacerbated Signal's security concerns.
In the virtual world, few things are as challenging as dealing with the aftermath of a controversial tweet from Elon Musk.
In May, Musk tweeted that the encrypted messaging app Signal had “known vulnerabilities.” Meredith Whittaker, Signal's CEO, told Wired that she “hadn't slept for two nights just doing Twitter stuff.”
Musk originally supported the app in 2021 with a two-word direct tweet: “Use Signal.”
“He's a fan. So I don't know what's changed,” Whittaker said. “What I do know is that, as far as we know, the claim was completely unfounded.” She added that there was no “serious report” to support Musk's claims.
Signal is considered more secure than most messaging apps because of “end-to-end encryption,” which encodes a sender's message so that only the intended recipient's device can unlock it. The platform's code is also open source, which the company says underscores its focus on privacy. “We operate openly, document our thinking, and make our code open source and available for review, so you don't have to take our word for it,” according to a Signal blog post.
Musk's comments, however, came amid a wave of criticism of the app. Around the same time, Pavel Durov, the CEO of rival app Telegram, also criticized Signal, saying it wasn't a secure choice for private messaging and that “the US government spent $3 million to build Signal's encryption.”
According to Wired, there are also figures in the 'hacker scene' who are suggesting better, 'more obscure, ultra-secure' messaging platforms.
Whittaker dismissed those claims, telling the outlet that “it’s very disappointing to me to see that kind of discourse.” For those who can’t verify the validity of claims against Signal — which, Whittaker said, is 99% of users — these types of comments can create real security issues. “It’s a matter of life and death.”
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