- cross-posted to:
- privacy@programming.dev
- cross-posted to:
- privacy@programming.dev
A 10-month Commerce Department probe concluded Meta could view all WhatsApp messages in unencrypted form
A 10-month Commerce Department probe concluded Meta could view all WhatsApp messages in unencrypted form
What I don’t understand yet is why there haven’t been any independent cybersecurity experts capable of finding a backdoor in WhatsApp. How hard would it be for an expert without access to the source code to find one? Are any independent entities monitoring WhatsApp’s security at all??
It’s not about being vulnerable. It’s probably a very tight software.
It’s just that Meta stores the private keys of the e2e encryption. So they can decrypt any and all chats if they want to.
The clients are one question, but the servers are another. If the backdoor is on the server end, which it sure looks like, then your experts won’t find anything by examining the client.
If the client was open source, it could be verified by inspecting this source alone. To my understanding, the clients do real end to end encryption. This is the good part. They also have some functionality to re-encrypt the data or export the secret key to let new peers take part, or so i guess. This is how your web browser can also read them after you peer it up. Now there might or might not be a function in the client, where meta can request the private key or re-encryption. This is really hard to figure out without having the source code.
Hey I work in cyber security. Just because an app has a backdoor doesn’t mean that the backdoor can be accessed by anyone. Accessing this backdoor would likely mean compromising meta themselves, not just the app or its communications.