Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

US has investigated claims WhatsApp chats aren't private

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 387 posts

Re: US has investigated claims WhatsApp chats aren't private

#101

Post by steve_taylor »

cosmicgadget wrote: post #32

> “We look forward to moving forward with those claims and note WhatsApp’s denials have all been carefully worded in a way that stops short of denying the central allegation in the complaint – that Meta has the ability to read WhatsApp messages, regardless of its claims about end-to-end encryption.” My money is on the chats being end to end encrypted and separately uploaded to Facebook.

> My money is on the chats being end to end encrypted and separately uploaded to Facebook.

If governments of various countries have compelled Meta to provide a backdoor and also required non-disclosure (e.g. a TCN secretly issued to Meta under Australia's Assistance and Access Act), this is how I imagined they would do it. It technically doesn't break encryption as the receiving device receives the encrypted message.

Re: US has investigated claims WhatsApp chats aren't private

#102

Post by Snoozus »

gruez wrote: post #86
modeless wrote: post #82

Meanwhile Apple has always been able to read encrypted iMessage messages and everyone decided to ignore that fact. https://james.darpinian.com/blog/apple-imessage-encryption

>has always been able to read encrypted iMessage messages ...assuming you have icloud backups enabled, which is... totally expected? What's next, complaining about bitlocker being backdoored because microsoft can read your onedrive files?

Absolutly, they intentionally make stuff sound secure and private while keeping full access.

Re: US has investigated claims WhatsApp chats aren't private

#103

Post by netsharc »

gruez wrote: post #84
cosmicgadget wrote: post #32

> “We look forward to moving forward with those claims and note WhatsApp’s denials have all been carefully worded in a way that stops short of denying the central allegation in the complaint – that Meta has the ability to read WhatsApp messages, regardless of its claims about end-to-end encryption.” My money is on the chats being end to end encrypted and separately uploaded to Facebook.

>being end to end encrypted and separately uploaded to Facebook That's a cute loophole you thought up, but whatsapp's marketing is pretty unequivocal that they can't read your messages. >With end-to-end encryption on WhatsApp, your personal messages and calls are secured with a lock. Only you and the person you're talking to can read or listen to them, and no one else, not even WhatsApp https://www.whatsapp.com/ That…

I wonder if keyword/sentiment extraction on the user's device counts as reading "by WhatsApp"...

There's the conspiracy theory about mentioning a product near the phone and then getting ads for it (which I don't believe), but I feel like I've mentioned products on WhatsApp chats with friends and then got an ad for them on Instagram sometime after.

Also claiming "no one else can read it" is a bit brave, what if the user's phone has spyware that takes screenshots of WhatsApp... (Technically of course it's outside of their scope to protect against this, but try explaining that to a judge who sees their claim and the reality)

Re: US has investigated claims WhatsApp chats aren't private

#104

Post by youknownothing »

Just to throw in a couple of possibly outlandish theories:

1. as others have said, they could be collecting the encrypted messages and then tried to decrypt them using quantum computing, the Chinese have been reportedly trying to do this for many years now.

2. with metadata and all the information from other sources, they could infer what the conversation is about without the need to decrypt it: if I visit a page (Facebook cookies, they know), then I share a message to my friend John, and then John visits the same page (again, cookies), then they can be pretty certain that the contain of the message was me sharing the link.

Re: US has investigated claims WhatsApp chats aren't private

#105

Post by gruez »

modeless wrote: post #97
gruez wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>has always been able to read encrypted iMessage messages ...assuming you have icloud backups enabled, which is... totally expected? What's next, complaining about bitlocker being backdoored because microsoft can read your onedrive files?

If you read the link you would know that contrary to your expectation other apps advertising E2EE such as Google's Messages app don't allow the app maker to read your messages from your backups. And turning off backups doesn't help when everyone else has them enabled. Apple doesn't respect your backup settings on other people's accounts. Again, other apps address this problem in various ways, but not iMessage.

>If you read the link you would know that contrary to your expectation other apps advertising E2EE don't allow the app maker to read your messages.

What does that even mean? Suppose icloud backups doesn't exist, but you could still take screenshots and save them to icloud drive. Is that also "Apple has always been able to read encrypted iMessage messages"? Same goes for "other people having icloud backups enabled". People can also snitch on you, or get their phones seized. I feel like people like you and the article author are just redefining the threat model of E2EE apps just so they can smugly go "well ackshually..."

Re: US has investigated claims WhatsApp chats aren't private

#107

Post by SoftTalker »

olalonde wrote: post #63
Ms-J wrote: post #5

Who do they expect to fall for the claims that a Facebook owned messenger couldn't read your "encrypted" messages? It's truly funny. Any large scale provider with headquarters in the USA will be subject to backdoors and information sharing with the government when they want to read or know what you are doing.

Me? I'd be very surprised if they can actually read encrypted messages (without pushing a malicious client update). The odds that no one at Meta would blow the whistle seem low, and a backdoor would likely be discovered by independent security researchers.

That was my reaction on reading the headline. Of course Meta can read them, they own the entire stack. The question would really be do they?

Re: US has investigated claims WhatsApp chats aren't private

#108

Post by Flere-Imsaho »

modeless wrote: post #82

Meanwhile Apple has always been able to read encrypted iMessage messages and everyone decided to ignore that fact. https://james.darpinian.com/blog/apple-imessage-encryption

And it's worse if you live in the UK:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/122234

In fact on this page they still claim iMessage is end-to-end encrypted.

Re: US has investigated claims WhatsApp chats aren't private

#110

Post by 0x_rs »

It's a proprietary, closed-source application. It can do whatever it wants, and it doesn't even need to "backdoor" encryption when all it has to do is just forward everything matching some criteria to their servers (and by extension anyone they comply to). It's always one update away from dumping your entire chat history into a remote bucket, and it would still not be in contradiction with their promise of E2EE. Furthermore, it already has the functionality to send messages when reporting [0]. Facebook's Messenger also has worked that way for years. [1] There were also rumors the on-device scanning practice would be expanded to comply with surveillance proposals such as ChatControl a couple years ago. This doesn't mean it's spying on each and every message now, but it would have potential to do so and it would be feasible today more than ever before, hence the importance of software the average person can trust and isn't as easily subject to their government's tantrums about privacy.

0. https://www.propublica.org/article/how-facebook-undermines-p...

1. https://archive.is/fe6zY

Post reply on HN