The recent terrorist attacks that left more than 129 Parisians dead have opened a new debate about encrypted communication platforms. Although still unconfirmed, intelligence and security experts have hinted that the perpetrators of the attacks may have used encrypted communication platforms to plan and stage the bloody seige.

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The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS) has claimed responsibility for the Paris Attack.

An unnamed European intelligence official told NBC News that "When you look at how sophisticated Daesh is in its use of social networks, it suggests that there are geeks behind this. Among the foreign [ISIL] fighters, you have people who are IT savvy [and] keep up with the technological developments."

In the days following the Paris attacks, several reports have claimed that the perpetrators used secure messaging platforms to communicate with each other without alerting security experts. Some security officials believe that the terrorists use encrypted communication platforms like WhatsApp, Telegram and Silent Circle. Investigators have speculated that the terrorists used the Sony PlayStation 4 console as a messaging platform. But this claim has already been invalidated.

While the ongoing investigation into the Paris attack has not uncovered direct evidence pointing to the terrorists' use of encrypted communication platforms, it has renewed the debate about regulations governing this type of security measures imposed by many tech companies.

A security measure called end-to-end encryption has raised a lot of concerns lately. This type of encryption method is very hard to crack since data passing through servers are encrypted when it leaves the sender's device and will only be decrypted once it reaches the recipient's device.

When used by terrorists, the end-to-end encryption method leaves law enforcers and intelligence communities virtually in the dark when it comes to tracking these people. New York Police Commissioner Bill Bratton told NPR that "From the law enforcement perspective, we describe this experience of going dark, that we no longer can penetrate the darkness to conduct our investigations. It's a very significant negative effect on our ability to detect and disrupt terrorist-related activity."

TagsParis Attack, Paris Attack 2015, Paris terror attack, paris france, encrypted messaging platform, Paris Attacks Encrypted Communication Platforms