US has investigated claims WhatsApp chats aren't private • Hacker News Board

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

#261

Post by beagle3 » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 9:58 PM UTC

varenc wrote: post #79

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.

If this was happening en-masse, wouldn't this be discovered by the many people reverse engineering WhatsApp? Reverse engineering is hard sophisticated work, but given how popular WhatsApp is plenty of independent security researchers are doing it. I'm quite skeptical Meta could hide some malicious code in WhatsApp that's breaking the E2EE without it being discovered.

This was happening en masse, perhaps still does - the cloud backup was unencrypted. Originally it was encrypted. Then, one day, Google stopped counting it towards your storage quota, but it became unencrypted. But even before that, Meta had the encryption keys (and probably still does).

When you get a new phone, all you need is your phone number to retrieve the past chats from backup; nothing else. That proves, regardless of specifics, that Meta can read your chats - they can send it to any new phone.

So it doesn’t really matter that it is E2EE in transit - they just have to wait for the daily backup, and they can read it then.

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

#262

Post by digiown » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 9:58 PM UTC

palata wrote: post #241

digiown wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not permissionless afaik. "Users" can't really do it. It's frustrating that all these legislations appear to view it as a business problem rather than a private individual's right to communicate securely.

Right, I get what you mean. But in a way, I feel like sometimes it makes sense to not completely open everything. Say a messaging app, it makes sense to not just make it free for all. As a company, if I let you interoperate with my servers that I pay and maintain, I guess it makes sense that I may want to check who you are before. I think?

We probably can't make it free for all, but for something like a messaging app, we also need to recognize that it isn't optional to function in society. It should be regulated more like a utility:

- Facebook can still control the identity, but there needs to be a legal recourse for getting banned, and their policies can't discriminate against viewpoints, for example

- The client specs should be open so that an alternate client can be implemented (sort of like how Telegram is currently)

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

#263

Post by bredren » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 9:59 PM UTC

I co-founded Gliph, which was one of the first commercial, cross platform messaging apps to provide end to end encrypt.

One area of exposure was push notifications. I wonder if the access described wasn’t to the messages themselves but content rich notifications.

If so, both parties could be ~correct. Except the contractors would have been seeing what is technically metadata.

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

#264

Post by mike_d » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 10:00 PM UTC

singpolyma3 wrote: post #249

TZubiri wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With all due respect to Stallman, you can actually study binaries. The claim Stallman would make (after punishing you for using Open Source instead of Free Software for an hour) is that Closed Software (Proprietary Software) is unjust. but in the context of security, the claim would be limited to Free Software being capable of being secure too. You may be able to argue that Open Source reduces risk in threat models w…

I was with you until you somehow claimed obfuscation can improve security, against all historical evidence even pre-computers.

This is a tired trope. Depending exclusively on obfuscation (security by obscurity) is not safe. Maintaining confidentiality of things that could aid in attacks is absolutely a defensive layer and improves your overall security stance.

I love the Rob Joyce quote that explained why TAO was so successful: "In many cases we know networks better than the people who designed and run them."

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

#265

Post by maqp » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 10:01 PM UTC

jcgl wrote: post #255

maqp wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well the thing is, the key exfiltration code would probably reside outside the TCB. Not particularly hard to have some function grab the signing keys, and send them to the server. Then you can impersonate as the user in MITM. That exfiltration is one-time and it's quite hard to recover from. I'd much rather not have blind faith on WhatsApp doing the right thing, and instead just use Signal so I can verify myself it's…

> That exfiltration is one-time and it's quite hard to recover from. Not quite true with Signal's double ratchet though, right? Because keys are routinely getting rolled, you have to continuously exfiltrate the new keys.

No I said signing keys. If you're doing MITM all the time because there's no alternative path to route ciphertexts, you get to generate all those double-ratchet keys. And then you have a separate ratchet for the other peer in the opposite direction.

Last time I checked, by default, WhatsApp features no fingerprint change warnings by default, so users will not even notice if you MITM them. The attack I described is for situations where the two users would enable non-blocking key change warnings and try to compare the fingerprints.

Not saying this attack happens by any means. Just that this is theoretically possible, and leaves the smallest trail. Which is why it helps that you can verify on Signal it's not exfiltrating your identity keys.

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

#266

Post by abcd_f » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 10:01 PM UTC

I witnessed something recently that points unambiguously at Whatsapp chats being not private.

Not two months ago I sent a single photo to a friend of some random MacGyver kitchen contraption I made. Never described it, just a photo with the lol. He replied lol. He never reshared nor discussed it with anyone else. We never spoke about this before or after. Two days later he starts seeing ads on Facebook for a proper version of the same. There's virtually no other explanation except for Meta vacuuming and analyzing the photo. None.

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

#267

Post by tptacek » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 10:02 PM UTC

bredren wrote: post #263

I co-founded Gliph, which was one of the first commercial, cross platform messaging apps to provide end to end encrypt. One area of exposure was push notifications. I wonder if the access described wasn’t to the messages themselves but content rich notifications. If so, both parties could be ~correct. Except the contractors would have been seeing what is technically metadata.

I'm unfamiliar with Gliph. What were the protocols/constructions you used?

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

#268

Post by maqp » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 10:05 PM UTC

subw00f wrote: post #224

maqp wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well the thing is, the key exfiltration code would probably reside outside the TCB. Not particularly hard to have some function grab the signing keys, and send them to the server. Then you can impersonate as the user in MITM. That exfiltration is one-time and it's quite hard to recover from. I'd much rather not have blind faith on WhatsApp doing the right thing, and instead just use Signal so I can verify myself it's…

Not that I trust Facebook or anything but wouldn’t a motivated investigator be able to find this key exfiltration “function” or code by now? Unless there is some remote code execution flow going on.

>Not that I trust Facebook or anything but wouldn’t a motivated investigator be able to find this key exfiltration “function” or code by now?

Yeah I'd imagine it would have been found by know. Then again, who knows when they'd add it, and if some future update removes it. Google isn't scanning every line for every version. I prefer to eliminate this kind of 5D-guesswork categorically, and just use FOSS messaging apps.

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

#269

Post by cedws » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 10:05 PM UTC

I said this in another recent HN thread but all encryption comes down to key management. If you don’t control the keys, something else does. Sometimes that’s a hardware enclave, sometimes it’s a key derivation algorithm, sometimes it’s just a locally generated key on the filesystem.

If you never give WhatsApp a cryptographic identity then what key is it using? How are your messages seamlessly showing up on another device when you authenticate? It’s not magic, and these convenience features always weaken the crypto in some way.

WhatsApp has a feature to verify the fingerprint of another party. How many people do you think use this feature, versus how many people just assume they're safe because they read that WhatsApp has E2EE?

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

#270

Post by snowwrestler » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 10:07 PM UTC

For context, the U.S. is also currently investigating whether Donald Trump actually won the 2020 presidential election (he didn’t), whether aspirin causes autism (it doesn’t), and whether transgenic research is woke (it’s not).

“The U.S. investigates” unfortunately does not mean as much as it used to. That said, I would rest easy in the knowledge that someone deep in the NSA already knows with absolute certainty whether the WhatsApp client app is doing anything weird. But they’re not likely to talk to a reporter or plaintiffs lawyer.