As the majority of tech companies lean into AI features and AI agents, Signal\u2019s president, Meredith Whittaker, is pushing back.\u00a0The Signal boss told Fortune that the rise of AI agents poses an \u201cexistential threat\u201d not just to secure messaging apps like Signal but to anyone who builds apps for phones or computers.<\/p>\n
To be able to fulfill their purpose of performing tasks on a user\u2019s behalf, AI agents need access to large amounts of sensitive information, including things like bank details and passwords. However, this creates a large new \u201cattack surface,\u201d that cybercriminals or spy agencies could use to steal sensitive personal or company information.<\/p>\n
AI agents are especially vulnerable to prompt injection attacks,<\/a> where malicious websites hide instructions that trick the AI into executing harmful actions. Because products like AI web browsers can read and act on web content, attackers could potentially steal emails, access accounts, exfiltrate data, overwrite clipboards, or redirect users to phishing sites.<\/p>\n \u201cThe way an agent works is that it completes complex tasks on your behalf, and it does that by accessing many sources of data,\u201d she said in an interview on the sidelines of the Slush technology conference in Helsinki, Finland, last week. \u201cIt would need access to your Signal contacts and your Signal messages\u2026that access is an attack vector and that really nullifies our reason for being.\u201d<\/p>\n Signal is often used by journalists and politicians due to its strong focus on privacy and security. The platform promises end-to-end encryption by default and minimizes data collection to protect user communications. If AI agents have unfiltered access to these communications through the operating system Signal is running on, attackers could exploit this new vulnerability. <\/p>\n \u201cThe integration of agents at the operating system level is being done in ways that are very reckless and insensitive to cybersecurity and privacy basics,\u201d Whittaker said. \u201cIt is a very, very dangerous architectural decision that threatens not only Signal, but the ability to develop safely at the application layer and the ability to have safe infrastructure that operates with integrity.\u201d<\/p>\n AI agents risk undermining the internet\u2019s security foundations<\/p>\n Rival messaging apps, such as Meta\u2019s WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, are leaning into AI features\u2014something that Whittaker sees as unnecessary and unwanted by users.<\/p>\n \u201cNo one wants AI in their messaging app. It\u2019s really annoying,\u201d she said. \u201cIf we look at what they\u2019re useful for at a consumer level, it\u2019s really not clear to me that that trade-off is worth it\u2026What are we actually optimizing for with these yawn-inducing conveniences?\u201d<\/p>\n Consumer appetite for AI in messaging apps is mixed, although there is some interest in features such as translation and summarization. Companies have made efforts to mitigate some of the security risks posed by these features and reassure users that their privacy is intact.<\/p>\n Meta<\/a>, for its part, has framed some of its new AI tools as safety-enhancing rather than privacy-eroding, pointing to features such as scam-detection and automated help functions.<\/a> The company also stresses that its AI features are only activated when users choose to engage with them, and that the assistant cannot read messages unless <\/a>they are explicitly sent to it.<\/p>\n Whittaker says Big Tech\u2019s rush to introduce AI, especially agentic AI, is raising security risks across the entire internet that far outweigh its potential use cases.<\/p>\n \u201cPart of what we\u2019re seeing is that there is a bit of nervousness around the amount of [capital expenditure] that has been expended to support this scale at all costs\u2026the infrastructure spend is eye-watering,\u201d she said. \u201cThere\u2019s a need to continually float these valuations in this market to investors and shareholders quarterly, leading to what I\u2019m seeing as a lot of reckless deployments that bypass security teams\u2026That is very dangerous.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As the majority of tech companies lean into AI features and AI agents, Signal\u2019s president, Meredith Whittaker, is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":155930,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[345,343,344,17019,4285,85,46,88560,94299,125],"class_list":["post-155929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-data-privacy","tag-data-security","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-messaging","tag-signal","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155929\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/155930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}