The Chinese government has just announced that it has achieved AirDrop's encryption protocol.
Since the 2019 protests in Hong Kong, AirDrop has been a solution widely used by opponents of the Chinese regime. The Beijing government is therefore trying by all means to reduce the importance of this functionality on iPhones. According to the official speech, Beijing wants to fight against “undesirable content”, a very vague term which includes both shocking and violent images as well as questions about the government in place.
In a recent speech, the ruling Chinese Communist Party announced that it had succeeded in breaking the encryption protocol used by Apple for AirDrop . A private company, under the aegis of Beijing, would have managed to break this encryption, providing access to crucial personal information.
The big challenge for Beijing in this fight against criticism of the government is above all to find the names of the authors of these messages. To achieve this, it was necessary to break the AirDrop encryption and thus know the identifier used for the sender of the message. Thanks to the work of this company, whose name has remained secret, it is now done.
China has therefore got its hands on the names of millions of people who have used AirDrop in recent weeks. If they are not all guilty of something, the government will now monitor the files sent. As soon as one of them has a more or less direct link with a criticism of the regime, the author of this message will be sanctioned.
Apple did not react
Apple has not yet reacted to the Chinese government's announcement. The Cupertino company finds itself in a more than delicate position. It cannot offend Beijing directly, the vast majority of its devices being built in China, in Foxconn factories .
But on the other hand, his silence, which acts as a sort of consent, risks going down very badly internationally. Many NGOs have condemned the ultra-repressive policy implemented by President Xi Jinping. They could quickly condemn Apple for the same facts if Apple does not react quickly.
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