As evidence, the lawsuit cites unnamed “courageous whistleblowers” who allege that WhatsApp and Meta employees can request to view a user’s messages through a simple process, thus bypassing the app’s end-to-end encryption. “A worker need only send a ‘task’ (i.e., request via Meta’s internal system) to a Meta engineer with an explanation that they need access to WhatsApp messages for their job,” the lawsuit claims. “The Meta engineering team will then grant access – often without any scrutiny at all – and the worker’s workstation will then have a new window or widget available that can pull up any WhatsApp user’s messages based on the user’s User ID number, which is unique to a user but identical across all Meta products.”
“Once the Meta worker has this access, they can read users’ messages by opening the widget; no separate decryption step is required,” the 51-page complaint adds. “The WhatsApp messages appear in widgets commingled with widgets containing messages from unencrypted sources. Messages appear almost as soon as they are communicated – essentially, in real-time. Moreover, access is unlimited in temporal scope, with Meta workers able to access messages from the time users first activated their accounts, including those messages users believe they have deleted.” The lawsuit does not provide any technical details to back up the rather sensational claims.
DUH
Shocked, I tell you
No if this is proven it would be a real scandal and would bring a lot of users to better alternatives.
If it’s false that’s good too, since then WA has e2e encryption
would bring a lot of users to better alternatives.
Most users of whatsapp don’t care about e2e. They hardly even know what it is.
Right. This place sometimes forget that we are tiny community of techies that hate the system. Makes me see this place as a bit of a circlejerk at times.
That’s just another comment
Well if I can’t trust Meta with my information, who CAN I trust
Me
Oh okay. My location is 55.752121, 37.617664, my full name is Jeremy, and my password is hunter9. I trust you not to tell this to anybody
Your full name is “Jeremy”?
Oh god damnit chemicalprofet why did you tell this guy i thougjt i could trust you :((
All I see is ‘••••••’
I see ‘******’ though.
Maybe it’s just a different interface.
Jeremy “Iks” Hunter IX
Edit: IX. Iks. I think we got it right now.
The Ninth
Pronounced “iks”
Just like Cher (which is short for Cheremy).
Your secret is safe with us and our 36,893 affiliates.
Legitimate interest, though 🤞
Nice to see the ancient lore alive.
Hi Vova
Can confirm, chemicalprophet is the best password manager I’ve ever used.
Ah! You did your own research!
ta
The drunk dude that’s always sitting on the ground near the park entrance and sell weird tissue dolls with curly hairs is more trustworthy, I’d say.
The biggest news is that Slashdot is still alive.
+5 insightful
Assume the same for Telegram and pretty much any chat platform that controls your private keys.
Telegram doesnt even pretend to be end to end encrypted.
Telegram for iOS lets you create “secret chats” but as far as I know other platforms have eliminated that functionality at the request of governments. And I would assume Apple technically controls the keys on device.
iOS lets you create “secret chats”
How? Not natively unless I’m mistaken
Not natively that I know of, but Telegram for iOS has the option when looking at someone’s profile. However, the Windows client does not.
Ah I see your edit now, thanks (and see how it was assumed implied :) )
The telegram was clear as a day they announced cooperation with the Russian government and they unblocked it. That was way before the whole France fiasco, I doubt they’re actually giving up the keys to France. I’m from East and many say that Telegram now is essentially a Russian weapon. Surveillance at home, total free reign (sell drugs, spread CP, etc.) in west.
If you’re American, I believe Telegram is actually safer than Whatsapp, as long as you can ignore the dirty side of it (surface deep web?), hence why Europe wants it under control
Wait, you are telling me that the company whos entire business is collecting personal information, including people who don’t sign up for their services, to leverage for advertising, is keeping their platforms unsecured they can continually grab more information rather than secure it?
I for one am shocked, absolutely shocked.
Yes, except they’re not leveraging your data for advertising, they’re leveraging it so they can manipulate your political views and keep you from finding solidarity with other working people.
@FlyingCircus @technology These two things are the same thing
15 years ago I’d have called this a conspiracy theory given how the evidence seems to be anecdotal, but given literally every single other thing we’ve learned in recent times about how cartoonishly evil and lying the tech bros truly are, it seems entirely likely.
s/the tech bros/humans/
Despite “the tech bros” really being that, I’m learning over time about some people surprisingly cowardly and evil, while looking like better versions of me, and some other people looking pretty normal and usual, while being epic and tragic heroes, and some other people looking like a typical Nazi 80 years late to the party, yet more honorable than many, and some other people looking like weak and nice versions of me, while having real warrior spirit.
You have no idea how big the world is in all dimensions. We are all looking at it via our daily interactions, via news and internet discussions, via games and via books, and we don’t see what’s deep inside. Well, I suppose, people who read classics can see something.
And they, these people on top of big tech, being just human, have such powers. What can they do with them? Perhaps we should forgive them for not being wise in deciding to have those powers, and praise them for doing less evil with them than they could.
So. Perhaps in 15 years you’ve just grown.
It is end to end encrypted but they can just pull the decrypted message from the app. This has been assumed for years, since they said they could parse messages for advertising purposes.
it’s not even that: they just hold the keys so can simply decrypt your messages with out your clients intervention any time they like
Yep, If they can access messages that are deleted from your device, then they have the keys.
Hasn’t it always been that they can decrypt the backups that you personally setup in wa, this way they don’t legally lie to you when the app tells you “this chat is encrypted, even Whatsapp cannot read the messages”.
Yes, any time you can store and recover encrypted cloud archives across devices, without needing to transfer keys between devices, it implies that there is a key archive somewhere in the cloud. Even Signal struggles to get this both user friendly and properly secure without compromising forward secrecy. I believe they still actually make you explicitly do a local key transfer to populate a new device, even though they have cloud archives now. Whatsapp doesn’t do that. And the app also clearly leaks some amount of unencrypted data anyway, archives or not.
Surely they have access otherwise how do they moderate and investigate account blocks, reports of spam etc. Accounts get suspended, then some automation reviews it, then it escalates to a human, who will have to make a judgement based on some policy. How can they do that if they see nothing? (I’m asking not condoning).
If I am not adding my own private key to the app, like in Tox, I don’t trust their encryption.
Tox also isn’t that great security wise. It’s hard to beat Signal when it comes to security messengers. And Signal is open source so, if it did anything weird with private keys, everyone would know
And Signal is open source so, if it did anything weird with private keys, everyone would know
Well, no. At least not by default as you are running a compiled version of it. Someone could inject code you don’t know anything about before compilation that for example leaked your keys.
One way to be more confident no one has, would be to have predictable builds that you can recreate and then compare the file fingerprints. But I do not think that is possible, at least on android, as google holds they signature keys to apps.
Signal has reproducible builds and here’s the instruction how to check it on Android https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/blob/main/reproducible-builds/README.md
If they have, then good. Wasn’t sure it was doable with current google’s signing process. Highly unlikely someone hasn’t tampered with them then (far easier to target the site displaying the “correct” fingerprint).
However, my original point still stands. Just because it is open source doesn’t in itself mean that a bad actor can’t tamper with it.
Signal is also on F-Droid, so it should be verifiable
Well, Whatsapp uses signal. Bad timing
How?
Unless proof is given, assume troll
Read the article? An app using signal does not imply that your data is still encrypted from corporations or government. Your neighbour joe is not very likely to break already established SSL, so using signal feels like someone is trying to sell me a bridge. Sense of false security. In fact, that was probably their goal all along.
WhatsApp is using Signals protocol for communication: https://signal.org/blog/whatsapp-complete/
I don’t fully understand what it entails, but from what I understand is that yes, WhatsApp is using the same encryption and message flow that signal uses, but you’re still using Meta’s app, and they can just read the plaintext message from there.
To my knowledge, under Signal, the encription keys are locally generated and stored, and the traffic flows between end points as a closed packet.
This does not seem to be the case here, as the keys are generated and stored outside your equipment and, thus, are viable to be used by a third party to access packets.
But I admit I speak heavily burdened by technical ignorance.
My understanding is they’re sending a request to your device that then decrypts and uploads messages, not storing the keys outside your device.
that’s incorrect. with whatsapp, your keys are stored on meta servers (the same as things like imessage). they can simply decrypt them whenever they like, just like being signed in as you. it’s completely invisible to your client
Or they can make a copy of the encryption keys on creation. Using the code is very different than using the code unedited, or using all the code.
Read more than just the title ffs
I did and nowhere is Signal mentioned in the article.
You state Whatsapp uses Signal. So, again: how?
The article does not describe what encryption it uses, it described how they’re abusing it. Whatsapp using Signal protocol is public knowledge.
What I’m trying to say is that a company using signal for it’s messaging app does not imply your data is safe from that company or governments.
You recommending an app purely because of Signal protocol under an article about how an app abuses signal protocol is pretty fucking ironic (aka. bad timing)
EDIT: Alright TikTokkers, I looked up the source on Google so that you don’t have to spend 30 seconds: https://signal.org/blog/whatsapp-complete/
You can stop downvotting me now.
Yes we know that it used the Signal protocol in 2016 but there is no doubt it drifted a lot since. A lot of changes were made to Signal since and we don’t know how WhatsApp protocol evolved. You can’t assume they’re still equivalent now. And one is open source with reproducible builds while the other is not.
It only uses some of signal’s code. Not necessarily the OOTB key storage and security.
What’s stopping the app from keeping your private key and still not encrypting anything?
I’m not trying to be difficult here, I just don’t see how anything outside of an application whose source you can check yourself can be trusted.
All applications hosted by other people require you to react positively to “just trust me bro”.
Or, if the app has the private key for decryption for the user to be able to see the messages, what’s stopping the app from copying that decrypted text somewhere else?
The thread model isn’t usually key management, it’s more about the insecure treatment of the decrypted message after decryption.
What’s to stop an evil company uploading the keys as soon as you enter them in the App? It certainly wouldn’t stop Meta.
Man, you just brought back memories. I forgot qtox was even a thing. I think I still have my profile saved in my dev folder somewhere for my account
WhatsApp client is closed source. Any claims around E2EE is pointless, since it’s impossible to verify.
It’s E2EE alright. Just, don’t ask what “ends” we’re talking about.
Their mouth and Zuckerberg’s ass
TMBE
Trust me bro encryption
Any claims around E2EE is pointless, since it’s impossible to verify.
This is objectively false. Reverse engineering is a thing, as is packet inspection.
Reverse engineering is theoretically possible, but often very difficult in practice.
I’m not enough of an expert in cryptography to know for sure if packet inspection would allow you to tell if a ciphertext could be decrypted by a second “back door” key. My gut says it’s not possible, but I’d be happy to be proven wrong.
Hell, as far as I know, E2EE would be indistinguishable from client to server encryption, where the server can read everything without the need for a secret “backdoor key”. You can see that the channel is encrypted, but you can’t know who has the other key.
The easiest way to break E2EE is to copy your private key to Meta’s servers. It’s very easy to implement, and close to impossible to detect.
Now you just need Meta to allow you on their networks to inspect packets and reverse engineer their servers because as far as I know, WhatsApp messages are not P2P.
/edit I betcha $5 that the connection from client to server is TLS(https), good luck decrypting that to see what its payload is.
No it is not. Whatsapp gets several updates a month. How do you keep up with that rate?
Outside of open-source. That shit is usually illegal
It isn’t. Otherwise security research would never happen for proprietary software and services.
SureSure no white hat never been sued before
In the US, CFAA is so draconian that in certain aspects it can be very illegal to reverse engineer code behind explicit ToS which whatsapp make you agree through click-wrap agreement (meaning explicit I agree button press) upon installing the app. So Meta could easily sue you with very good chance of winning. I work in security and reverse engineer a lot of stuff but just because my company has lawyers that will protect me (also I’m not an american) but generally americans are super fucked here and there are many stories of people being sued and even imprisoned for breaking ToS.
E2EE isn’t really relevant, when the “ends” have the functionality, to share data with Meta directly: as “reports”, “customer support”, “assistance” (Meta AI); where a UI element is the separation.
Edit: it turns out cloud backups aren’t E2E encrypted by default… meaning: any backup data, which passes through Meta’s servers, to the cloud providers (like iCloud or Google Account), is unobscured to Meta; unless E2EE is explicitly enabled. And even then, WhatsApp’s privacy policy states: “if you use a data backup service integrated with our Services (like iCloud or Google Account), they will receive information you share with them, such as your WhatsApp messages.” So the encryption happens on the server side, meaning: Apple and Google still have full access to the content. It doesn’t matter if you, personally, refuse to use the “feature”: if the other end does, your interactions will be included in their backups.
Yeah. E2EE isn’t a single open standard. It’s a general security concept / practice. There’s no way to argue that they don’t really have E2EE if in fact they do, but they keep a copy of the encryption key for themselves. Also, the workers client app can simply have the “decrypt step” done transparently. Or, a decrypted copy of the messages could be stored in a cache that the client app uses… who knows? E2EE being present or not isn’t really the main story here. It’s Meta’s obvious deceitful-ness by leveraging the implicit beliefs about E2EE held by us common folk.
I don’t think it can be called End to End Encryption if it is actually End to End and The guy in the Middle.
Every technical definition of End to End Encryption states only the Sender and Recipient have keys to decrypt the message.
Anything else is using “End to End Encryption” purely as a marketing term like “Lite” or “Pure”.
It’s not End to End and The guy in the Middle. The message is encrypted from one end to the other. The detail about who has a copy of the key doesn’t spoil that fact, and I guarantee you Meta doesn’t care about using E2EE as a marketing term even if it misrepresents their actual product by matter of status quo. What matters is what they can theoretically argue in a court room.
A proper solution would be to have an open standard that specially calls out these details, along with certifications issued by trusted third parties.
Yeah, I guess if you want users to keep sharing “confessions, [] difficult debates, or silly inside jokes” through a platform you’ve acquired, E2EE might give the WhatsApp user the false sense of privacy required.
So, is it basically treating every message as a “group” message where it sends it to some system WhatsApp account and then also to your intended receiver? This is what I’m assuming based on them supposedly being able to see deleted messages. Also would let them say it’s technically still “E2EE” since it’s indeed E2EE to your receiver, but it’s also E2EE to them as well.
Ah yes, good old E2E AWA3E.
“End to end, and we are also an end”.
The E is for “Everyone”
The S is for Security.
I guessed you meant “end to end, as well as 3rd end” before reading on.
If that is the case though, its not E2E it’s client server encryption and then server client encryption back. thats just deceptive marketing at that point.
Obviously it’s deceptive. But if you individually encrypt the messages you’re sending, the one you send to the receiver still can’t be decrypted by Meta, only the copy sent directly to Meta can, so the copy sent to your intended receiver is still “E2EE.”
I don’t agree that would fit the protocol of end to end, that’s a common misconception, E2E by design means that it’s encrypted from the sender to the intended recipient. When you send a message the intended recipient isn’t the server, it’s the user you are sending to. That type of system would be called an encrypt in transit or a server client encryption not E2E. If they are classifying it as E2E that would be incorrect.
A classic example of a server client or encrypt in transit would be HTTPS, the server acts as a middleman between the clients, meaning that it decrypts the message then re-encrypts the message to the designated choice.
With an e2e system, the message the server transmits is never decrypted, the server already knows the destination based off the public key
An e2ee group chat would need every member to have every other member’s public key. So for 5 people, your client would sign with your private key and send 4 unique messages encrypted each with 1 other person’s public key. Each of them would decrypt their copy of the message with their private key and verify the signature with your public key. So I think what arcterus was saying was that employee who requests access to a user’s messages then becomes just another member of a group chat, but the UI just doesn’t show it as such. Every message you send is then secretly encrypted, on your client, with their special public key and sent to them to be decrypted. That would still be E2EE.
ok yea, I do agree with that POV on it. A ghost key like that would be within spec, cause yea at that point it would just be another member. I wasn’t taking it as an additional group member though, since the whistleblower is stating that they can put in any user id and have access to all messages live, that would mean they would have a ghost user on all messages period regardless of if its a group chat or not.
That wouldn’t be implausible though.
I will say, not too long ago there was some question if I had setup a WhatsApp account with my number due to some emails I was receiving. Not wanting to install the app and unwittingly create an account just by checking if I had one, my wife created a group chat with just her and my number, sent a message, and then we saw it get marked as read by all. Which in an E2EE system should not have been possible without me having the app setup. so I did go ahead and wiped an old and setup the app to make sure I was in control of any account for my number, and I did then receive that group chat. But still, very sketchy.
Except it is still encrypted to the intended recipient. As the other commenter said, WhatsApp is just another “member” of the group that you can’t see. Basically all they’d have to do is have a server somewhere functioning as a WhatsApp client. Your client sends the message to your intended recipient. It also then sends the message to their “client.” The routing server for the messages can’t decrypt the messages. All the messages are still encrypted per-member of the group and can’t be decrypted until it hits the ends, but WhatsApp is basically a mole siphoning all your messages and storing them.
I used to store GPG encrypted files in google drive. But then I noticed bitrot in the stored files which made them impossible to decrypt. So I started adding CRC redundancy through DVDisaster. Which worked but became a PITA. So I finally gave up.
They really want your data.
simpler than that in most likelihood… meta is the key holder so login and password recovery is simpler (or at least that’s the excuse they give): you login, they send you your key, which they can also access (and decrypt your messages) whenever they like
Call me old fashioned but I really think that for real E2EE the vendor of the encryption and the vendor of the infrastructure should be two different entities.
For example PGP/GPG on <any mail provider>… great! Proton? Not great
Jabber/XMMP with e2ee encryption great! WhatsApp/Telegram/signal… less so (sure I take signal over the other two every day… but it’s enough to compromise a single entity for accessing the data)
Okay Old Fashioned, but doesn’t open source encryption audited by a third party solve this problem? Signal protocol for example? Also proton, I’m guessing, but I’m too lazy to check
Cynical me would say they don’t have to use the code they put up on GitHub in production.
By this logic, can we trust any open source software, even if they claim to use some third party encryption? They could say they’re using a super secure encryption, even show it implemented in their open source code base, then just put the other, secret evil backdoor code base in production? Is there a way for any open source project to prove that the code in their open source repo is the code in production?
If you can self host it, yes. Like matrix
This is called reproducible builds. With this all builds of a version will be binary-identical. So you can build from the repo and the compare it with the appstore binary and see if the owner was honest.
I found this:
https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Desktop/blob/main/reproducible-builds/README.md
Looks like they’re working on reproducibility, at least in the desktop app. That’s a little disappointing but i guess I’m happy they’re working on it.
Neat! And can this been done with signal or proton?
Signal: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/blob/main/reproducible-builds/README.md
Proton: didn’t find anything (but I just did a quick lookup)
Yep
Unfortunately even the best intentioned and best audited project can be compromised. So that is not a guarantee (sure, much better than closed source but that is a given)
You may be forced by a rubber hose attack (or legal one) to insert vulnerabilities in your code… and you have the traffic… a single point to attack… signal/proton/etc
Is it possible with two different vendors? Sure it is but it is way more complicated
That’s a really good point. All we’d need is for signal devs to be compromised in some way and the next update ends security for signal.
why
Not much people use clients anymore.
Yeah and I think it’s a pity. It’s the byproduct of “app culture” everything has to be easy. One button, plug and play…
Unfortunately like many things in life “saving” (time and effort n this case) has a cost
No surprised at all tbf.
Proposed line of defense: “With all respect, M. Judge, with all the different times we fucked our users, lied to them, tricked them, experimented on them, ignored them, we already sold private discussions on Facebook in the past, our CEO and founder most famous quote is «They trust me, dumbfucks!», the list goes on and on: no one in their sane mind would genuinely believe we were not spying on Whatsapp! They try to play dumb, they could not possibly believe we were being fair and honest THIS time?!”
You gatta be real stupid to not realize that Facebook is harvesting your data.
