341–350 of 387 posts
As I understand it, that's a security weak spot with WhatsApp, that could (in theory) allow Meta read users messages. Is it the case?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We didn't review the entire source code Then it's not fully investigated. That should put any assessments to rest.
By that standard, it can never be verified because what is running and what is reviewed could be different. Reviewing relevant elements is as meaningful as reviewing all the source code.
I don’t, and don’t see how it could possibly be construed to be logical to trust them.
I definitely trust a non-profit open source alternative a whole lot more. Perception can be different than reality but that’s what we’ve got to work with.
Ex-WhatsApp engineer here. WhatsApp team makes so much effort to make this end to end encrypted messages possible. From the time I worked I know for sure it is not possible to read the encrypted messages. From business standpoint they don’t have to read these messages, since WhatsApp business API provide the necessary funding for the org as a whole.
> Ex-WhatsApp engineer here. WhatsApp team makes so much effort to make this end to end encrypted messages possible. From the time I worked I know for sure it is not possible to read the encrypted messages. None of this makes the point you want to make. Being a former engineer. The team making "so much effort". You "knowing for sure". Like many in security, a single hole is all it takes for your privacy to pour out o…
That person doesn’t work there anymore. For all we know Zuck could wake up one day and say “that’s it, we need the data and revenue from reading WhatsApp chats. Change our policy in the most low key way possible.”
Honestly, it’s too tempting isn’t it? They have the largest conversation network out there.
It doesn’t help that the company has just about zero trust built up among their customers. The whole dang company changed their name arguably to try to shed the “Facebook” baggage.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have to assume you have never worked on security cataloging of third party dependencies on a large code base. Because if you had, you would realize how ridiculous it is to state that app security can't be assessed until you have read 100% of the code That's like saying "well, we don't know how many other houses in the city might be on fire, so we should let this one burn until we know for sure"
What you are saying is empirically false. Change in a single line of executed code (sometimes even a single character!) can be the difference between a secure and non-secure system. This must mean that you have been paid not to understand these things. Or perhaps you would be punished at work if you internalized reality and spoke up. In either case, I don't think your personal emotional landscape should take preceden…
This is kind of pointless, nobody is going to audit every single instruction in the Linux kernel or any complex software product.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No end-to-end encryption by default. WhatsApp has. No end-to-end encryption for groups. WhatsApp has. No end-to-end encryption on desktop. WhatsApp has. No break-in key-recovery. WhatsApp has. Inferring Telegram's security from public statements of *checks notes* former KGB officer and FSB director -- agencies that wrote majority of the literature in maskirovka, isn't exactly reliable, wouldn't you agree?
Telegram has private chats. I don't pay attention to his words, indeed. Way before the Ukrainian war, Russia had a massive campaign trying to block Telegram and they failed on a technical level. This has never happened with WhatsApp.
No wonder the great Russian firewall is struggling to keep TG at bay. Wake up.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 fo…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>I know the default assumption with Telegram is that they can read all your messages The client is open source. It's trivial to verify this is 100% factually happening. They have access to every group message. Every desktop message. Every message by default. If you enable secret chats for 1:1 mobile chats, you are now disclosing to Telegram you're actively trying to hide something from them, and if there ever was met…
Currently, the Russian government is trying to squeeze people out of Telegram and move them over to MAX: https://caspianpost.com/regions/russia-tightens-telegram-res... WhatsApp also operates in Russia, despite Instagram and Facebook being banned. So I wouldn't count on its E2EE either. Signal still requires a phone number and proprietary Google blobs on mobile. Many third-party Telegram clients exist - Signal allows…
>So I wouldn't count on its E2EE either.
This is the worst way to assses E2EE deployment. 5D-chess.
>Signal still requires a phone number and proprietary Google blobs on mobile.
Telegram also requires a phone number. If you didn't have double standards, I bet you'd have no standards.
>Many third-party Telegram clients exist
The official implementation and default encryption matters. 99.99% just assume Telegram is secure because Putin supposedly tries to block it. They don't know it's not E2EE. And no third party TG desktop client offers cross-platform E2EE or E2EE groups. IIRC there's exactly one desktop client that tries to offer E2EE 1:1 chats but that's not seamless. TG has no idea how to make seamless E2EE like Signal.
You ignoring that Signal is both open source and always E2EE and complaining about it's "proprieatry blobs" yet looking past TG's atrocious E2EE speaks volumes.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Signal protocol prevents replay attacks as every message is encrypted with new key. Either it's next hash ratchet key, or next future secret key with new entropy mixed via next DH shared key. Private keys, probably not. WhatsApp is E2EE meaning your device generates the private key with OS's CSPRNG. (Like I also said above), exfiltration of signing keys might allow MITM but that's still possible to detect e.g. if you…
Wouldn't ratchet keys prevent MITM too? In other words if MITM has your keys and decrypts your message, then your keys are out of sync from now on. Or do I misunderstand that?
One interesting way to detect this would be to observe sender's outgoing and recipient's incoming ciphertexts inside the client-to-server TLS that can be MITM'd by users. Since the ratchet state differs, so do the keys, and thus under same plaintext, so do the ciphertexts. That would be really easy way to detect MITM.
WhatsApp's end-to-end encryption has been independently investigated: https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/ws/files/324396471/whatsapp.pdf Full version here: https://eprint.iacr.org/2025/794.pdf We didn't review the entire source code, only the cryptographic core. That said, the main issue we found was that the WhatsApp servers ultimately decide who is and isn't in a particular chat. Dan Goodin wrote about it here: https://arst…
Why did you not mention that the WhatsApp apk, even on non-google play installed devices, loads google tag manager's scripts? It is reproducibly loaded in each chat, and an MitM firewall can also confirm that. I don't know why the focus of audits like these are always on a specific part of the app or only about the cryptography parts, and not the overall behavior of what is leaked and transferred over the wire, and n…
Still very important but my issue has never been with zucks inability to produce solid software, rather in its intentions and so them being good engineers just makes them better at hiding bad stuff.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's protected cryptographically with key transparency. Anyone can check what the current published keys for a user are, and be sure they get the same value as any other user. Specifically, your wa client checks that these keys are the right key.
Even if your client is asking other clients to verify, what if everyone has the same wrong key for a particular user Whatsapp has chosen to spoof?