Another article, much better and presents in more detail that Olvid was audited on an older version and chosen because it was French and they applied for it (French) https://www.numerama.com/tech/1575168-pourquoi-les-ministres-vont-devoir-renoncer-a-whatsapp-signal-et-telegram.html
Google translate link original post : https://www-lepoint-fr.translate.goog/high-tech-internet/les-ministres-francais-invites-a-desinstaller-whatsapp-signal-et-telegram-29-11-2023-2545099_47.php?_x_tr_sl=fr&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=fr&_x_tr_pto=wapp
The translation has some mistakes but good enough to understand the context.
Here is a short summary :
Olvid passed a 35d intrusion test by Anssi (French cybersecurity state organisation) experts or designated experts, with code examination without finding any security breach. Which is not the case of all other 3 messaging apps (either because they didn’t do any test, or because they didn’t pass).
This makes WhatsApp, signal and telegram unreliable for state security.
And so government members and ministerial offices will have to use Olvid or Tchap (French state in house messaging app).
More detail in the article.
Not being able to inspect their code vs no passing are different things.
Are they? If you want to know if something is secure enough to use then not being able to examine the code should obviously disqualify it.
Sure it does, but that doesn’t make it bad.
Open source code is not the only solution to secure communication.
You can be extremely secure on closed source tools as well.
If they found specific issues with Signal aside from not being allowed to freely inspect their code base, I suspect we would be hearing about it. Instead I don’t see specific security failings just hat it didn’t make the measure for their security software audit.
As an example of something that is closed source and trusted:
The software used to load data and debug the F-35 fighter jet.
Pretty big problem for 16 countries if that isn’t secure… closed source. So much s you can’t even run tests against the device for loading data to the jet live. It’s a problem to sort out, but it’s an example of where highly important communication protocols are not open source and trusted by the governments of many countries.
If their particular standard here was open source, ok, but they didn’t do anything to assure the version they inspected would be the only version used. In fact every release from that basement pair of programmers could inadvertently have a flaw in it, which this committee would not be reviewing in the code base for its members of parliament.
Lol at military stuff being secure. Most often it’s not, it’s just hidden. There was an Ars Technica article about the “secure” devices used at military bases being full of holes for example: https://arstechnica.com/security/2023/08/next-gen-osdp-was-supposed-to-make-it-harder-to-break-in-to-secure-facilities-it-failed/
When code is hidden all you know for sure is that you don’t know anything about it. You certainly can’t say it’s secure.
If a piece of code or a system is really secure then it does not care if the code is open because the security lays in the quality of its algorithms and the strength of the keys.
Well let’s give some counter examples in the softwares I mentioned :
WhatsApp closed : Owned by Facebook. Well Facebook had multiple data leaks, privacy violations and nothing substantial was done about it. Definitely not trustable (also zero days are getting sold on the black market for WhatsApp (https://techcrunch.com/2023/10/05/zero-days-for-hacking-whatsapp-are-now-worth-millions-of-dollars/ ).
Telegram closed : not end to end encrypted. Russian app. Not trustable.
Signal open : well this one is e to e encrypted. Open source, maybe could be trusted. Seems to have passed some security audits (https://community.signalusers.org/t/overview-of-third-party-security-audits/13243), tho it’s based in the US and uses servers, maybe the US may have super computers capable of decrypting such communications. However is signal has switched their encryption to quantum computer resistance it may be too hard even for a state actor. However they also “debunked”/ignored zero-day reports which were not reported through their own tool, and by asking the US for confirmation. I am not sure if the US can be trusted to give confirmation about the existance or not of vulnerabilities when they are very likely to use them (https://thehackernews.com/2023/10/signal-debunks-zero-day-vulnerability.html?m=1).
Olvid open (servers closed) : is French, e to e, and backed up by an encryption PhD. And why not use a local messaging app witch also is very secure and open source.
Notice how closed source is untrusted here. The economic activity of the tool changes how trustable it is. Military équipement has a huge and strict budget, it has to be secure.
Communication apps are user first. So they do what they can get away with, and that is very true for Facebook.
I had no idea o l v i d was open source, since you mentioned it I googled and I found their repo, it’s not mentioned on the English web page
https://github.com/olvid-io/olvid-android
AGPLv3 … nice
Client only source, just like telegram, no server side source.