Signal co-founder Moxie Marlinspike posted a mocking message after the US government mistakenly invited a journalist to a classified chat group on the messaging app.
"There are many great reasons to use Signal," Marlinspike, whose real name is Matthew Rosenfeld, wrote on X on March 25. "Now there's a feature that allows the US Vice President to randomly invite you to a chat group to coordinate sensitive military operations. Don't miss out on this opportunity."
According to Business Insider, Marlinspike took the opportunity to promote the app in an ironic way after the Atlantic editor-in-chief was accidentally added to a Signal chat group called the “Houthi PC small group” on March 13. PC is said to stand for Principal Committee. The group, which is comprised of mostly high-ranking US officials, including Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, discussed the Houthi airstrikes in Yemen that took place two days later.
Marlinspike wasn’t the only social media user to mock the incident. However, he received mixed reactions, with some blaming official errors and others saying the platform needs to improve its security.
Signal is an open-source messaging app that is end-to-end encrypted and only the recipient can see the messages. The platform was launched in 2014 by a security expert nicknamed Moxie Marlinspike. Its nearly impenetrable encryption technology quickly received praise from many people, including billionaire - Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey and former CIA spy Edward Snowden.
Signal and Telergam emerged in 2021 as a "shelter" for people whose accounts were locked by Facebook and Twitter. The landing took place after they felt attacked online because social networks banned Donald Trump's account on the grounds that he incited violence on January 6, 2021.
Marlinspike was born in 1980 in Georgia (USA), former director of Twitter's security team (X). He is also the author of the Signal Protocol encryption method currently used by Signal, WhatsApp, Google Messages, Facebook Messenger.