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Show HN: Whapp-irc – A simple WhatsApp IRC gateway

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Re: Show HN: Whapp-irc – A simple WhatsApp IRC gateway

#22

Post by sopooneo »

est31 wrote: post #18
toxicFork wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One alternative is sandboxing the js code (or using existing browser or networking logging capabilities) to reverse engineer network requests and write a more raw client instead of piggybacking onto the web client, that would still have risks of changes but less likely than this.

> reverse engineer network requests and write a more raw client People already have done that. The most famous example is the yowsup [1] python library. The problem with these client implementations is that WhatsApp is banning any numbers that use them [2]. So most recent attempts to use WhatsApp outside of the official clients revolve around using WhatsApp Web somehow. That appears to work better, but even here if y…

How can the server component of WhatsApp tell that the client is using the Python library you mention? If that library implements the protocol correctly, shouldn't it be indistinguishable from the official web client to the server?

Re: Show HN: Whapp-irc – A simple WhatsApp IRC gateway

#23

Post by askthrowaway »

My solution was to run WhatsApp in emulator and enable adb over tcp and send adb commands from server directly to emulator. I automate sending messages and pdf files from our erp system. and for receiving messages we just have a Whatsapp web available for one of our employee so he can reply and escalate whatever.

Re: Show HN: Whapp-irc – A simple WhatsApp IRC gateway

#26

Post by metildaa »

_8j50 wrote: post #7
coldsauce wrote: post #2

why hasn't there been anything like this for iMessage? or any 3rd party applications at all, really.

A Signal gateway would be nice but an irc gateway to a e2e secure platform might constitute a reduction of security for all involved parties. There are jabber and slack gateways. In practicality,I would like to see a gitter to IRC gateway,because of foss projects usage of both platforms.

Signal Weechat does this iirc, there are a few other alternative clients out there too: https://github.com/thefinn93/signal-weechat

Re: Show HN: Whapp-irc – A simple WhatsApp IRC gateway

#27

Post by thaumasiotes »

sopooneo wrote: post #22
est31 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> reverse engineer network requests and write a more raw client People already have done that. The most famous example is the yowsup [1] python library. The problem with these client implementations is that WhatsApp is banning any numbers that use them [2]. So most recent attempts to use WhatsApp outside of the official clients revolve around using WhatsApp Web somehow. That appears to work better, but even here if y…

How can the server component of WhatsApp tell that the client is using the Python library you mention? If that library implements the protocol correctly, shouldn't it be indistinguishable from the official web client to the server?

Based on your parent comment...

> This is really sad for people like me who don't want to install WhatsApp on their phones because it sends too much of my data to Facebook... probably that's precisely why they are so strict, to get all the data because that's all they get (the service is gratis after all).

When you send a message through WhatsApp, WhatsApp knows you sent the message and who you are.

Since they know who you are, they also know, independently of the request you just sent, whether you're using their official client, and what data they've managed to extract from your phone.

If I get a seemingly-valid message from you despite the fact that I know perfectly well you've never installed my official client, I'm going to conclude you're not using my official client.

Re: Show HN: Whapp-irc – A simple WhatsApp IRC gateway

#29

Post by est31 »

sopooneo wrote: post #22
est31 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> reverse engineer network requests and write a more raw client People already have done that. The most famous example is the yowsup [1] python library. The problem with these client implementations is that WhatsApp is banning any numbers that use them [2]. So most recent attempts to use WhatsApp outside of the official clients revolve around using WhatsApp Web somehow. That appears to work better, but even here if y…

How can the server component of WhatsApp tell that the client is using the Python library you mention? If that library implements the protocol correctly, shouldn't it be indistinguishable from the official web client to the server?

Creating a correct implementation of a protocol is one thing, creating one that is indistinguishable from another implementation another. E.g. for TCP/IP you can find out the OS just from the additional information even though implementations are correct [1]. I guess they are doing something similar. And even if your protocol implementation were perfectly indistinguishable from the other one, usage patterns might reveal differences. E.g. if you have a bot then bots will most likely reply immediately after you issue a command. If you add a constant wait time, it's still distinguishable from humans typing at varying times. Same for uniformly randomly distributed wait times, I'm sure there is a distinction (I'd say it's correlated to message length for example). All of this is visible without looking at the message contents, which are obviously not available to the WhatsApp service.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TCP/IP_stack_fingerprinting

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