• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.21 no.8
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• pp.29-39
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• 2016

Recently, KakaoTalk users seek secure messengers with fears of 'possible' censorship over a mobile messenger. Instead German messenger "Telegram" is gaining popularity in South Korea. Are the known as secure messengers actually secure? In this paper, we evaluate secure mobile messengers in terms of private information protection. We establish the fourteen criteria to evaluate the functionality of messenger apps including communication encryption in transit, the possibility of leakage of decrypted messages via server, an encryption algorithm, a key exchange algorithm, an ephemeral message application, etc. Line, Telegram, Snapchat, WhatsApp, Wickr, Facebook Messenger and KakaoTalk, which have many worldwide and domestic users, are to be targeted. Wickr is ranked at the top of the evaluation, followed by Telegram and Line but KakaoTalk and Snapchat are ranked at the bottom of the evaluation list.