Yeah quite impressive.

the crypto might be secure; i wouldn't be so sure about the rest of the code.

And it's never the crypto that breaks, it's usually something else.

E.g : Pegasus spyware don't break whatsapp crypto either

Well the NSA is probably decent at building software. But none of this really matters if the OS isnt secure and the OS is much more complex and less verifiable. Also, why does the government use their own versions of Signal that are more secure, makes you wonder.

Im sure they allow bugs that benefit the NSA.

https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/bugs/2026/10/signal-bug-co...

White-listing contacts would have prevented the gaffe when a journalist was added to a war planning group

Would it? As I remember the journalist's number was added to an existing contact by some smart feature in iOS, not sure how a whitelist would help there.

    Well the NSA is probably decent at building software. 

Ultimately I'm sure they are but my secondhand understanding from friends is that it's difficult for the US gov't to attract and retain software engineering talent.

It's not just total compensation. Working on classified stuff can be a bit of a career killer, since you can't talk about your past work when looking for a new job.

Plus there's the antipathy toward the current Trump administration, and the general moral unwillingness of many to do defense-related work in general.

Also, last I heard, cannabis use was still a disqualifier for DoD work and/or various security clearances. There are periodic ongoing polygraph tests, not sure about ongoing piss tests. The government is big; I'm sure the exact policies differ from department to department. But this turns a lot of people off.

Of course, every single thing I've said above might also be viewed as a positive by some engineers. Maybe they attract enough "true believers" to more than make up for the other factors.

I would argue that US intelligence, especially on the technical side of things has put emphasis on privatization of these sectors.

US intelligence knows they can't go to policy makers and get funding for billion dollar domestic spy programs. So they stand up private companies and give them smallish grants at the beginning to get them on their feet, i.e Flock, Palantir, Signal Foundation, EFF, cloudflare, oracle. I could go on and on about orgs that their start off the back of US intelligence, whether through direct funding or through their alumni network.

The US Department of Defense has a long tradition of private public partnerships, but the privatization of intelligence has been accelerated in the last decade.

So while the NSA might not be able to attract talented SWEs for gov salaries to work on defense, their vendors that owe them their existence can.

That's a great insight!

(Damn, that looked like Claude-speak. I swear I'm human. But then again, that's what a bot would say...)

This didn't verify the Signal app, only the signal encryption protocol

still a big codebase: https://github.com/signalapp/libsignal