#encryption

The European Union is one step away from reviving proposed rules that would require scanning of private messages for child sexual abuse material, threatening the future of end-to-end encryption. If enacted, these rules could undermine privacy and encryption across the EU, affecting hundreds of millions of users and setting a dangerous precedent for mass surveillance. The proposal, known as Chat Control, has two versions: Chat Control 1.0 allows voluntary scanning by platforms, while Chat Control 2.0 mandates scanning and effectively bans end-to-end encryption.

The European Union is advancing Chat Control proposals 1.0 and 2.0, which would require messaging platforms to scan all private messages and uploaded content for child sexual abuse material, potentially undermining end-to-end encryption. These proposals represent a significant shift towards mass surveillance, threatening the privacy and security of all EU citizens' digital communications. If enacted, they could set a global precedent for weakening encryption and enable broader government surveillance capabilities. Chat Control relies on client-side scanning, which checks content on users' devices before encryption, bypassing end-to-end protection. The proposals have been criticized for technical risks like false positives and potential abuse by authorities for purposes beyond child protection.

Since Linux 6.9, the cryptsetup luksSuspend command no longer wipes disk-encryption keys from memory during suspend, leaving them accessible in RAM. This regression undermines the security of LUKS-encrypted devices because an attacker with physical access to a suspended system could extract the master key from memory and decrypt the disk without needing the passphrase. The issue affects Linux kernels from 6.9 onward, but not all distributions are impacted because luksSuspend is not part of the official cryptsetup specification; it originated as a Debian extension.