Hi,
I was reading [this](https://www.businessinsider.com/passenger-faces-120k-fines-after-fighter-jets-scrambled-for-bomb-joke-2024-1?amp) article, in which some kid made a joke about bombing the plane to his friend/s over snapchat just before boarding. The message was intercepted by the intelligence agencies and some response military planes were sent to intercept the plane.
So the assumption is that airport network traffic is heavy sniffed and analysed by local intelligence agencies but based on the following facts:
– snapchat is end to end encrypted
– traffic goes over HTTPS
– he sent the message to his friend/s who clearly didn’t report him for a prank
How was the intelligence agency able to figure out the content of the message?
In: Technology
I think the most likely explanation is snapchat had some keyword/AI based system and passed the information on to the authorities. Their E2E is spotty, and apparently doesn’t apply to team chats.
Sniffing the packets and breaking the encryption seems unlikely. Even if not E2E, the messages will be encrypted with TLS* to the snapchat servers. It’s certainly possible the government can break TLS, but if they can I think it’s very unlikely they’d risk revealing they can break it on a case of this size.
(*I mean, I assume they do, I haven’t done any packet sniffing to check it out. But at this point it’s almost easier to use TLS than not, and it would be baffling if they weren’t.)
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