Signal CEO Resigns, WhatsApp Co-Founder Takes Over as Interim CEO

Moxie Marlinspike, the founder of the popular encrypted instant
messaging service Signal, has announced that he is stepping down as
the chief executive of the non-profit in a move that has been
underway over the last few months.

“In other words, after a decade or more, it’s difficult to
overstate how important Signal is to me, but I now feel very
comfortable replacing myself as CEO based on the team we have, and
also believe that it is an important step for expanding on Signal’s
success,” Marlinspike said^[1] in a blog post on
Monday.

Executive chairman and WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton will
serve as the interim CEO while the search for a replacement is
on.

Founded in July 2014, Signal has more than 40 million monthly
users, in part driven by a surge of new users in January 2021 when
Meta-owned WhatsApp enacted^[2]
a controversial policy change that sparked a privacy backlash^[3]
over the nature of personal information shared with its parent
company.

But the communication app’s rapid growth has had its share of
downsides, what with the company’s employees raising concerns^[4]
about the fallout stemming from potential misuse of the service by
malicious actors, which could add ammunition to ongoing^[5]
debates^[6]
about weakening encryption protections^[7] to facilitate law
enforcement investigations.

Complicating matters further is its decision to integrate MobileCoin^[8], purportedly an
“encrypted-focused cryptocurrency” into the app to facilitate
peer-to-peer payments, a shift that could potentially put private
messaging at risk by not only attracting regulatory scrutiny but
could also serve as an open invitation for criminals to exploit the
platform to their benefit.

“Signal and WhatsApp have effectively protected end-to-end
encryption from multiple legal attacks at the state and federal
level,” Alex Stamos, Facebook’s former chief security officer,
told^[9]
The Platformer last week.

“But the addition of pseudo-anonymous money transfer functions
greatly increases their legal attack surface, while creating the
possibility of real-life harms (extortion, drug sales, CSAM sales)
that will harm them in court, legislatures and public opinion.”

Security researcher Bruce Schneier had a similar take last year
when Signal began testing support for MobileCoin payments.

“Secure communications and secure transactions can be separate
apps, even separate apps from the same organization,” Schneier
said^[10]. “End-to-end encryption
is already at risk. Combining it with a cryptocurrency means that
the whole system dies if any part dies.”