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Nickjet45 t1_je6peze wrote

Reply to comment by sethguy12 in ELI5: When a third party app says they offer "end to end encryption," what does that mean? by [deleted]

Presumably no,

A back door for one person, is a back door for everyone. Companies who are serious about security, understand this and don’t have back doors.

NSA does have tools to brute force encryptions, but they take time and can be patched out (assuming it’s a software, not hardware, solution.)

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pseudopad t1_je73a1k wrote

They may also have been hoarding exploits to circumvent encryption, using "side channel" attacks.

You don't need to brute force an encrypted message if you can install an exploit on the user's phone that makes a copy of the message after the user has voluntarily decrypted the message to view it.

Such attacks may also be able to extract the encryption key from the phone (or pc), which may allow them to monitor the messages to and from that particular user while they are in transit.

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