For open source messengers, you can check whether they actually encrypt your messages and whether the server has access to your encryption keys but what about WhatsApp? Since it’s not open source, you can’t be sure that the encryption keys aren’t sent to the server, right? Has there been a case where a government was able to access WhatsApp chats without reading them from the phone itself?
You bet your ass they can. Since when has Facebook taken anybody’s privacy seriously? And you remember all the Snowden leaks? Like how AT&T has been a government apparatus for spying for decades? Or how about the way that the USA taps under sea cables to monitor data, causing China to build totally parallel backbone infrastructure
The better question is whether Signal, despite being open source, is actually secure. It’s very plausible that the govt has backdoors somewhere, for either encryption, the OS, the programming language, the app store, or some random dependency lib
The answer is yes, the US government spies on everything, and has a complete profile of everyone
Time to bet my ass
Well you gotta be careful if it’s your only donkey but I’m still confident you’ll end up winning a second ass
Probably not, but it’s impossible to verify. There’s a strong argument for open source when security really matters.
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Everything I’ve ever heard about government cryptography from people close to me is that the government (FBI, military) is wildly far ahead of what’s available publicly. I wouldn’t count on anything you do on the Internet to be truly private.
That was at times of DES. Cryptography that is used today is proven to be complicated enough that it’s unbreakable unless the government got quantum computing working at sufficient skale.
Like others wrote, attacks will happen when the messages are received and decrypted.
The code is not open source, so it’s hard to verify how good the encryption is or if it has backdoors.
I’m not an expert in cryptography, but from my limited knowledge, the cryptographic keys used are very important. If Meta or the government can somehow know the decryption key to your messages or predict it, then they can see your messages.
But they most likely don’t need to decrypt it in transit. One of the vulnerabilities in this system is Google firebase, which delivers notifications to your phone when WhatsApp messages arrive. Ever noticed how those notifications include the message content and the sender? Google has access to this information, despite the encryption.
That’s just an example. Google has access to a lot on your phone.
Another thing to consider is message metadata. The content of your message is encrypted, but what about information like the destination of your message, its recipients, time sent and received, and frequency? I’d even argue this is more important than content in many situations. Sometimes, linking person A to person B tells me a lot about person A.
Ever noticed how those notifications include the message content and the sender? Google has access to this information, despite the encryption.
Not necessarily. I work on a messaging app, and we only use firebase to “wake up” the app. Initially the notification doesn’t display anything meaningful, but the app very quickly connects to the server (tells the app who it should connect with) and then the peer (to finally get the actual content). The notification is updated once we have the content. But it typically goes so fast that you only ever see the final version of the notification.
People got arrested for WhatsApp messages in my country so there is a backdoor built in no question
That’s mostly group chats and someone from the group showed the comments to the police.
Dunno
The better question is, do you trust meta at all? I’m sure they have a way to read everyone’s chats and would gladly hand over yours to the government if they want it.
If you did not enable end-to-end encryption for your WhatsApp backups on Google Drive, the US government could possibly compel Google to hand over your encrypted (but not end-to-end encrypted) backup, and compel Meta to hand over the decryption keys for the backup.
Details about how WhatsApp backup works: The Workings of WhatsApp’s Backups (and Why You Should Enable End-to-End Encrypted Backups).
I know that WhatsApp backups aren’t safe and I never turned them on
It does not matter how good the encryption is. The app on your device has to be able to decrypt the content to be able to show it to you. If it has access to the decrypted data, it could just send it somewhere. If it has access to your private key, it can leak it. Even if the app is open source, you do not know if the binary on your phone matches that source, unless it uses reproducible builds and you actually verify the binary on your particular device, after each update.
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They can just ask Meta for the chats lol, don’t even have to probably already have access.
this post has some good information.
tldr - you cant fully verify
I personally wouldn’t touch WhatsApp with a 10foot pole. As it is owned by Facebook, the company who earlier this year paid a company to compromise TAILS OS to find a pedo. Which its not the fact that they threw a pedo in jail. But the fact they compromised anonymity and in no way are a government body!!! So glowies be glowing hard at Facebook.
They also have done other spooky shit. Which is why the only reason I use Facebook is to sell my shit.
We could also talk about the OS and hardware your using to message people for security. If you want to know more read permanent record by Edward snowden. Its a great book and talks alot about PRISM and other spooky stuff
Governments, if they want, can decrypt any chat, not just Whatscrap. But it makes a difference if a chat, especially this Zuckerbot shit, directly opens a Backdoor to governments, to give them access, or if they have to bother hacking the chats themselves, which due to its cost and time, is only done with a court order.
