Of course, this is basic knowledge in IT, there is no such thing as 100% security in electronic communication. But the Air Force officers, including their chief, Inspector Ingo Gerhartz, could, based on what is known so far, be involved in their conversation about the cruise missile, which was intercepted by Russians Taurus behaved quite amateurishly.
It now seems clear that the telephone switch was set up via the American communications platform Webex. This enables end-to-end encryption, which is considered very secure. The content of the communication is encrypted on the end devices and only decrypted again on the other participants’ end devices. Even the platform provider Webex cannot decrypt this content. However, this form of encryption must be switched on specifically. On the other hand, it does not work if participants dial in by telephone. But that was apparently the case.
If the conversation was actually conducted unencrypted, it would be easy for spies to record it, for example by gaining access to the router of the hotel in Singapore from which a participant connected. With suitable software, the data traffic can be intercepted and the conversation data can then be filtered out. IT experts have been warning for many years against unencrypted communication in public networks such as hotels, train stations or cafés. Other attack options are also conceivable.
Webex, which is operated by the US company Cisco, came under discussion during the pandemic for data protection reasons. As with other communication platforms from US providers, such as Teams from Microsoft or Zoom, data protection advocates expressed concerns. At that time, Cisco announced that it had provided 4.2 million more conferences in one day. Security gaps have been identified several times in the software, especially in browser extensions.