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Ex-WhatsApp cybersecurity head says Meta endangered billions of users

theguardian.com

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Re: Ex-WhatsApp cybersecurity head says Meta endangered billions of users

#61

Post by rhizome »

globalnode wrote: post #34
ath3nd wrote: post #23

What a trash company Meta has consistently been. From enabling genocide in Myanmar, to interfering with elections, to giving user data to third parties in violation of its own daya policies, to straight up weird stuff like pirating/torrening books to train their steaming pile of garbage called llama, to having sex chatbots be weird to children. And then there is the even weirder decisions of zuck, the biggest loser o…

They managed to tap in to a seemingly unlimited ocean of uninformed useful idiots, paid shills, bots and psychopaths. Its how you get rich in social media.

Greater Fool Theory

Re: Ex-WhatsApp cybersecurity head says Meta endangered billions of users

#62

Post by sudahtigabulan »

> In his whistleblower complaint, Baig is requesting reinstatement, back pay and compensatory damages, along with potential regulatory enforcement action against the company.

If the company is so bad (it is), why does he want back?!

'Just pay me the salaries I "missed", and keep them coming.' The regulatory action is just "potential".

I have no sympathy for Meta, but this guy...

Re: Ex-WhatsApp cybersecurity head says Meta endangered billions of users

#63

Post by skybrian »

sudahtigabulan wrote: post #62

> In his whistleblower complaint, Baig is requesting reinstatement, back pay and compensatory damages, along with potential regulatory enforcement action against the company. If the company is so bad (it is), why does he want back?! 'Just pay me the salaries I "missed", and keep them coming.' The regulatory action is just "potential". I have no sympathy for Meta, but this guy...

Maybe so he can quit properly? I wonder how these lawsuits work? Maybe a lawyer would know.

Re: Ex-WhatsApp cybersecurity head says Meta endangered billions of users

#64

Post by saagarjha »

lordofgibbons wrote: post #5

Given how WhatsApp is the de-facto way to communicate outside of the West and China, these security/data-handling "weaknesses" are most likely a feature, not a bug. An absolute bonanza for the certain intelligence services. Remember, kids: End to end encryption is useless if the "ends" are fully controlled by an (untrustworthy) third party.

Ok, what do you suggest instead?

Re: Ex-WhatsApp cybersecurity head says Meta endangered billions of users

#65

Post by saagarjha »

crypto_throwa wrote: post #9
lordofgibbons wrote: post #5

Given how WhatsApp is the de-facto way to communicate outside of the West and China, these security/data-handling "weaknesses" are most likely a feature, not a bug. An absolute bonanza for the certain intelligence services. Remember, kids: End to end encryption is useless if the "ends" are fully controlled by an (untrustworthy) third party.

Without open source, end to end encryption is useless. It's not hard to hide a piece of code that defeats the encryption in closed source code.

It is actually quite difficult.

Re: Ex-WhatsApp cybersecurity head says Meta endangered billions of users

#66

Post by 14 »

throw0101a wrote: post #37
bigiain wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't tell if I'm being paranoid or just realistic, when I suspect that FBI/Apple fights over decrypting/unlocking iPhones or iMessage are just part of Apple's security theater. If I were Evil-Tim-Cook, I'd have a deal with the FBI (and other agencies) where I'd hand over some user's data, in return for them keeping that secret and occasionally very publicly taking Apple to court demanding they expose a specific us…

> If I were Evil-Tim-Cook, I'd have a deal with the FBI (and other agencies) where I'd hand over some user's data, in return for them keeping that secret and occasionally very publicly taking Apple to court demanding they expose a specific user and intentionally losing - to bolster Apple's privacy reputation. The FBI wants its investigations to go to court and lead to convictions. Any evidence gained in this way woul…

I imagine if you have the information parallel construction becomes trivial.

Re: Ex-WhatsApp cybersecurity head says Meta endangered billions of users

#67

Post by saagarjha »

sudahtigabulan wrote: post #62

> In his whistleblower complaint, Baig is requesting reinstatement, back pay and compensatory damages, along with potential regulatory enforcement action against the company. If the company is so bad (it is), why does he want back?! 'Just pay me the salaries I "missed", and keep them coming.' The regulatory action is just "potential". I have no sympathy for Meta, but this guy...

Companies are not relationships where once they're your ex they are never worth interacting with ever again. If you are doing good work and then HR pushes you out, then it is reasonable to sue the company to get them to pay you damages and then go back to doing what you were before with the protection that they won't do it again.

Re: Ex-WhatsApp cybersecurity head says Meta endangered billions of users

#68

Post by realz »

saagarjha wrote: post #64
lordofgibbons wrote: post #5

Given how WhatsApp is the de-facto way to communicate outside of the West and China, these security/data-handling "weaknesses" are most likely a feature, not a bug. An absolute bonanza for the certain intelligence services. Remember, kids: End to end encryption is useless if the "ends" are fully controlled by an (untrustworthy) third party.

Ok, what do you suggest instead?

I think Signal is the safest choice. If you want to be absolutely sure, host your own service, and hope you know how to make it have airtight security.

Re: Ex-WhatsApp cybersecurity head says Meta endangered billions of users

#69

Post by mynameisash »

palata wrote: post #42

I hate Meta as much as the next person, but it feels like "endangering billions of users" is exagerating here. The complaint is pretty much that WhatsApp engineers can access metadata ( NOT the content of the messages). This said, WhatsApp is not open source, so it's impossible for users to verify how the encryption works, so users have to trust that it's properly end-to-end encrypted. If you care about privacy (and…

> The complaint is pretty much that WhatsApp engineers can access metadata (NOT the content of the messages).

I don't even take this statement at face value. It's trivially easy to include models on client side that can do some message classification and treat that as "metadata" that would give insight into the content of the message.

Re: Ex-WhatsApp cybersecurity head says Meta endangered billions of users

#70

Post by bri3d »

ants_everywhere wrote: post #58
stingraycharles wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren’t those encrypted with a key that lives on your device only?

how would you restore if you lost your device?

Backups with Advanced Data Protection also enroll:

* Recovery Keys

* Recovery Contact (someone who holds your recovery key in key escrow)

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