The EU Commission's $4 million age verification app cracked in 2 minutes
After more than a year of development, the European Union Commission created an application designed to verify users' ages on social networks. The project cost approximately $4 million and was heavily promoted as a tool to "protect children online."
But Pavel Durov, founder of Telegram, said he cracked it in just 120 seconds.
"The EU Commission spent over a year developing this 'age verification app,' its president unveiled it with great fanfare yesterday—and now it’s been broken in just two minutes."
Durov believes this failure may not have been accidental: after being compromised, EU officials could use the excuse of insecurity to justify scrapping privacy protections and 'fixing' the app.
"European bureaucrats are desperately looking for an excuse to quietly turn this so-called 'privacy-respecting' age verification tool into a surveillance system monitoring every European using social networks."
The EU is pushing forward mandatory digital identity verification for all social media platform users under the guise of 'security.'
$4 million, over a year of R&D, broken in just 2 minutes—this directly exposes the EU bureaucracy’s technological incompetence and massive budget waste.
Durov directly accuses the EU of using 'child protection' as a cover for mass surveillance: first create a vulnerable system → deliberately let it be hacked → then use 'insecurity' as justification to eliminate privacy and enforce universal online identity verification. The EU will likely push for legislation, while platforms will resist citing privacy and security concerns.
Original: toutiao.com/article/1862701295393792/
Disclaimer: This article represents the personal views of the author