PRESS: Russian firms thinking of getting access to messenger traffic

MOSCOW, Oct 4 (PRIME) -- Russian companies have started working on receiving access to correspondence of WhatsApp, Viber, Facebook Messenger, Telegram and Skype users under data retention laws aimed at fighting against terrorism, business daily Kommersant reported Tuesday.

Con Certeza, a developer of a system for investigation activities on networks of mobile operators, is looking for a contractor to research catching and deciphering traffic of the messengers, according to a letter of a Con Certeza employee to a colleague at an information security firm.

“The approximate scope of work is the following: analyze the main messengers WhatsApp, Viber, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, Skype for platforms iOS and Android; prepare an expert conclusion on options to intercept sensitive data, or identifiers of interlocutors, passwords, messages, when working with copies of traffic and present a prototype if possible,” the letter read.

Con Certeza gives two months for each of the messengers and proposes to start with Viber. It will pay 130,000 rubles for each messenger for the main part of the work and 230,000 rubles as a bonus. The aim is to carry out or prove impossibility of the initiative.

“The price is obscure. This is the price of hacking a WhatsApp account of a certain person with full access to correspondence. These are unofficial prices, and they are not applied widely,” Alexei Lukatsky, a consultant for Internet security at Cisco, told the daily.

Messengers are yet to see massive access to correspondence, and the result on an intercept option could be negative, the expert said.

(62.5477 rubles – U.S. $1)

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