Stefan Mileschin

The man can still get you

The case against former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen has bought up the issue of encrypted communications and the false sense of security they provide.

Within the detailed federal allegations against former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, who pleaded guilty yesterday to eight charges including campaign finance violations, are multiple references to texts sent by Cohen and even a call made “through an encrypted telephone application”.

This must seem odd as Cohen was apparently a fan of encrypted communications apps like WhatsApp and Signal. This should have kept his messages and calls out of the paws of investigators.

In June, prosecutors said in a court filing the FBI had obtained 731 pages of messages and call logs from those apps from Cohen’s phones. Investigators managed to reconstruct at least 16 pages of physically shredded documents.

Among the embarrassing communications was a document of Cohen’s communications with officials at the National Enquirer about allegations from porn actress Stormy Daniels—whom Cohen allegedly paid on behalf of Trump, violating campaign finance law.

At the moment, it is unclear if the FBI actually cracked any of the encryption to get the data and it is possible that Cohen, who apparently at times taped conversations, stored the conversation logs incorrectly.

But he is not the only one. Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, himself found guilty of eight counts of federal offences earlier this week, also saw his encrypted WhatsApp and Telegram communications brought up in court over alleged witness tampering. Those messages were in Manafort’s Apple iCloud account which everyone knows is super secure and impossible to crack.

What this shows is that encryption appears to be providing a false sense of security, particularly if you are dumb enough to hang onto the message after it has been sent.

https://fudzilla.com/news/47028-coha...-communication