Cellebrite Pushes Update After Signal Owner Hacks Device

Cellebrite, a well- known provider of phone – unlcking and hacking technology for law enforcement agencies, pushed an update to its products less than a week after the CEO of Signal claimed to have hacked one of the company’s products.

Moxie Marlinspike, the founder of the popular encrypted messaging app Signal, explained in a blog post last week that he had obtained a Cellebrite device and found that “industry standard exploit mitigation defenses are missing, and many opportunities for exploitation are present.” According to him, that allowed an attacker to embed malicious files in their app or phone – once connected to a Cellebrite unlocking device – that would then exploit the Cellebrite devices and manipulate what kind of data the device could access, potentially compromising police investigations.