
WhatsApp Rolls Out End-To-End Encryption to Its Over 1B Users - randomname2
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/04/whatsapp-rolls-out-end-end-encryption-its-1bn-users
======
ianpurton
It's great that WhatsApp can't see my cat pictures anymore. But there are 2
privacy and free speech issues that are not met.

Firstly META DATA. They know who I contact, when I contact them and how
frequently. So people could derive information about me based on who I talk
to.

Secondly, they can ban me.

Perhaps the EFF need to add more criteria to their secure message score card.
[https://www.eff.org/secure-messaging-scorecard](https://www.eff.org/secure-
messaging-scorecard)

But on the whole, a positive move.

~~~
maxerickson
When the client is a phone and the service is rapid messaging, how do you even
begin to solve the metadata problem?

Even with opaque routing the phone company can correlate activity times.

~~~
nxzero
There's never a single right solution, but if traffic analysis was the issue,
endpoints could introduce latency, use Tor, sync/mix traffic with other
endpoints via P2P, inject fake traffic, etc. - though if the core system leaks
metadata, this would be pointless.

~~~
21
Messaging apps are often used outside, with limited bandwidth, and are highly
interactive. I would be annoyed to wait more than 0.5 sec until my message is
delivered.

Maybe an "ultra-secure" mode could be created, and if you enable that for a
chat, traffic could be routed through tor. And you would have a separate list
of "ultra-secure" contacts, which are not based on phone-numbers.

~~~
maxerickson
Special routing for the ultrasecure messages highlights that they were
requested to be ultrasecure and makes correlation easier (by reducing the
candidate pool).

~~~
21
Right, but it would be like the ISP knowing that you use Tor. Useful, but not
that much if you do it constantly.

This ultra-secure mode for example could send a 1 KB packet every 15 minutes,
weather you are talking with someone or not. Something would also need to be
done to incoming packets, so that they won't stand out. I'm sure there is a
suitable protocol out there. This would increase latency and reduce capacity,
but this is why it's called ultrasecure, some inconveniences are expected.

------
lrei
Apps that force you to give them (and everyone else) your phone numbers for ..
ummm ... "contact discovery" and yet talk about privacy are a bit of a
contradiction.

No plausible reason for why apps like WhatsApp (and Signal) couldn't use
e-mail addresses for this. Or at least provide it as an alternative. It's even
problematic for people who change phone numbers, have multiple phones, want to
use desktop clients, etc

My opinion: if it requires a phone number, it's not really interested in
privacy. Move on.

~~~
BhavdeepSethi
I feel there is no relation to privacy here. It's also the practical choice.
Emails can be easily created to by people pretending to be someone else. If
you have someone's number on your phone, there is a good chance you have
communicated with them before and have thus done some authentication. You can
keep creating new email ids to spam people. That becomes very difficult with
numbers.

~~~
lrei
Sure there is. My phone number is private information. And it can trivially be
traced back to me (no possibility of anonymity).

I don't necessarily want to share it with everyone I want to talk to. Or every
company that makes a chat app.

I'm pretty sure Snowden didn't start out by giving his phone number around...

Plus every successful chat app before WhatsApp (from ICQ, XMPP apps, MS
Messenger, Google Chat, Facebook Messenger) was fine without this requirement.

Is the hypothesis that it is now impossible to have a successful chat app
without it being tied to a phone number?

We are not discussing a convenience "option" the user can skip but rather a
requirement for these apps to work.

~~~
pfg
WhatsApp is a mobile messaging app. It's a drop-in replacement for SMS. There
would be absolutely no reason for _anyone_ to use WhatsApp if they were just
another chat app with their own contact discovery that's not based on phone
numbers. Their market share would be miniscule.

No one is forcing you to use a messaging app which is using your phone number
as an identifier to contact anyone you don't want to see your phone number.

~~~
lrei
No one is forcing anyone to make claims about privacy either.

1) New social networks tend to replace old social networks: I'm not forced to
use it but, for example, I can't go back to XMPP because others don't use it
anymore. Meaning the option is not to communicate.

2) If everyone, including open-source developers (e.g. Signal), are doing this
now and no-one is developing alternatives that run on modern platforms and are
easy to use in non error-prone way w/o phone numbers, what exactly are the
options even disregarding social network effects?

3) I doubt it's fully clear to many people what can be inferred from metadata
related being trivial to prove who they spoke to and when. E.g. if it had been
trivial for the NSA to know that one of its contractors was chatting with
reporters it would've been game over for Snowden. In courts, circumstantial
evidence like this can still be (and has been) used to imply guilt. Implying
privacy under these circumstances seems unwise.

4) WhatsApp is mobile, fast, reliable and easy to use; Most of their
competition at the time it launched and even now can't match that. This
includes FB Messenger, Skype, Google, MS Messenger, etc I'm not sure it is
proven that their success is entirely due to phone numbers. I've seen lots of
people exchange phone numbers just for whatsapp.

~~~
pfg
> 1) New social networks tend to replace old social networks: I'm not forced
> to use it but, for example, I can't go back to XMPP because others don't use
> it anymore. Meaning the option is not to communicate.

Right, but this is a _mobile messaging app_. There are still hundreds of
_desktop_ (or: not primarily mobile) messaging apps out there, many of which
are _very_ popular, and they're not going away any time soon. Phone numbers
are how mobile phones are usually identified, and to ask a _mobile_ messaging
app to use something else for identification is, to put it bluntly, quite
silly.

> 2) If everyone, including open-source developers (e.g. Signal), are doing
> this now and no-one is developing alternatives that run on modern platforms
> and are easy to use in non error-prone way w/o phone numbers, what exactly
> are the options even disregarding social network effects?

There's nothing in the protocol that forces anyone to use phone numbers as
identifiers. The current users of the Signal protocol just _happen_ to be
mobile messaging apps, where it makes sense to use phone numbers as
identifiers.

> 3) I doubt it's fully clear to many people what can be inferred from
> metadata related being trivial to prove who they spoke to and when. E.g. if
> it had been trivial for the NSA to know that one of its contractors was
> chatting with reporters it would've been game over for Snowden. In courts,
> circumstantial evidence like this can still be (and has been) used to imply
> guilt. Implying privacy under these circumstances seems unwise.

Now you're talking about metadata, and that's a different topic entirely.
Merely using a pseudonym instead of your phone number as an identifier is
going to do exactly _nothing_ to prevent any of the things you mentioned. If
you want to hide your metadata, you should be looking at something like
vuvuzela[1]. No one claimed that WhatsApp is doing any of that.

> 4) WhatsApp is mobile, fast, reliable and easy to use; Most of their
> competition at the time it launched and even now can't match that. This
> includes FB Messenger, Skype, Google, MS Messenger, etc I'm not sure it is
> proven that their success is entirely due to phone numbers. I've seen lots
> of people exchange phone numbers just for whatsapp.

I'd argue that they wouldn't have been able to reach critical mass without
phone number-based contact discovery. That they were the only ones who did it
_right_ at the time doesn't mean the two aren't related.

[1]:
[https://github.com/davidlazar/vuvuzela](https://github.com/davidlazar/vuvuzela)

~~~
lrei
> . Phone numbers are how mobile phones are usually identified, and to ask a
> mobile messaging app to use something else for identification is, to put it
> bluntly, quite silly.

I disagree it's silly.

> There's nothing in the protocol that forces anyone to use phone numbers as
> identifier

I'm aware. But there's also no alternative to phone number now. So my point
stands until this changes.

> Merely using a pseudonym instead of your phone number as an identifier is
> going to do exactly nothing to prevent any of the things you mentioned

Yes it does if the pseudonym can not be connected to me. That requires other
security/privacy measures but phone numbers prevent that.

> No one claimed that WhatsApp is doing any of that.

If you say something is great for privacy but don't include the asterisks it's
misleading.

> I'd argue that they wouldn't have been able to reach critical mass without
> phone number-based contact discovery.

No one has proven it either way. I can't be certain they would've been
successful, you can't they wouldn't. But I do submit as evidence of my
hypothesis that several social networks were successful on mobile without it
(e.g. Twitter, Instagram and Facebook).

~~~
pfg
> But I do submit as evidence of my hypothesis that several social networks
> were successful on mobile without it (e.g. Twitter, Instagram and Facebook).

All of those examples use phone numbers as (at the very least) a secondary
contact discovery mechanism on mobile. All but Instagram had existing user
bases when they went into the mobile market. None of them are primarily a
messaging app.

Do you have an example of a _popular_ mobile messaging app without phone
number-based contact discovery?

~~~
lrei
Do you have an example of a popular mobile messaging app other than WhatsApp

~~~
pfg
WeChat has over 650 million users, mostly in China. Quoting Wikipedia: "WeChat
allows people to add friends by a variety of methods, including searching by
username or phone number, adding from phone or email contacts [...]"

~~~
lrei
Good one.

------
tptacek
EFF should stop with this silly scorecard. I hate the thing because it's
inaccurate and incoherent (arguments I've made ad nauseam elsewhere on HN),
but on this thread you can see another good reason: it makes EFF the ref, and
crowds always try to work the ref.

So whatever "score" WhatsApp gets, it's the wrong score, because: not open
source; because: runs on iPhones; because: metadata; because: Facebook is
evil, &c.

~~~
Findeton
But the point the EFF makes is very important. If the code is not open source,
we just cannot verify the security of the application. All applications must
be considered unsafe unless we can review the code. We can't review Whatsapp's
source code, and therefore Whatsapp is to be considered unsafe.

So yeah, Whatsapp has made a probably positive move, but it is still largely
unsafe.

~~~
simonh
But if the code is open source, we _can_ verify it's security?

Heartbleed and Shellshock, the two most significant vulnerabilities found in
heavily used open source software, were found by vulnerability testing and not
code inspection. So while being open source is a nice-to-have attribute for a
piece of software, that's as far as it goes. Painting open source as being a
magical wand that wishes away all our security troubles is completely out of
order.

Edit: I'll go further. It's become dismayingly apparent that very little
systematic code review of open source software in order to secure it is
actually taking place. It now seems quite possible that the most thorough
investigations of software vulnerability, via code analysis or any other
techniques, are carried out by those wishing to exploit them. They are well
funded and highly motivated. Looked at in that light, the balance may well tip
towards open source actually increasing the likelihood of software
vulnerabilities being exploited maliciously.

The open source community has a long way to go if it's going to clearly
demonstrate that it's model is advantageous, and complacent pronouncements of
it's assumed superiority like this aren't going to achieve that.

~~~
lmm
> But if the code is open source, we _can_ verify it's security?

No - the code could be "open source" but unreadable. But if it's not open-
source there's definitely nothing we can do.

> Heartbleed and Shellshock, the two most significant vulnerabilities found in
> heavily used open source software, were found by vulnerability testing and
> not code inspection. So while being open source is a nice-to-have attribute
> for a piece of software, that's as far as it goes

a) afl-fuzz and the like require access to the source code.

b) Those were the vulnerabilities that made it into production. They tell you
nothing about what proportion of potential vulnerabilities were stopped by it
being open source.

~~~
tptacek
Fuzzers _do not_ require source code. That is absolutely false. Afl-fuzz does,
but you badly overplayed your hand by adding "and the like". Fuzzing
proprietary closed source protocols by instrumenting closed-source binaries is
a bread-and-butter software security project that virtually any application
security consultant can do effectively.

~~~
JoachimSchipper
And even afl has qemu-mode, although I have no idea how well that works.

------
_wmd
This is quite a cavalier recommendation for proprietary unaudited (for the
public at least) spyware that uploads your phone book to a company
participating in PRISM.

~~~
kccqzy
WhatsApp doesn't upload your phone book. All contact info resolution is done
locally.

~~~
_wmd
How does the app figure out another telephone number has a WhatsApp account?
How does it fetch profile information for that telephone number without
communicating the desire to fetch it to WhatsApp? Perhaps WhatsApp ships their
entire profile photo and telephone number database to every phone

~~~
kccqzy
There are two things here: a) the app can take a snapshot of your phone book,
upload it, associate it with your own WhatsApp account, and then keep the
remote version synchronised; and b) the app can periodically perform disparate
requests to the central directory server to query the profile information for
each number. As far as I know, WhatsApp uses approach b. These two may seem
similar but in approach b, WhatsApp the service wouldn't learn of any contact
removals. WhatsApp the app would, of course, but the service wouldn't. Now,
with some simple filtering and statistics, WhatsApp the service can deduce
your phone book with some certainty, but I believe most would agree that it is
materially different from actually uploading your phone book.

~~~
pfg
> Now, with some simple filtering and statistics, WhatsApp the service can
> deduce your phone book with some certainty, but I believe most would agree
> that it is materially different from actually uploading your phone book.

No, not really. Both implementations give WhatsApp a complete list of all my
contacts. The fact that one of those implementations _might_ not be 100%
accurate because of deleted contacts changes nothing - if you're someone who's
worried about a third party having your contact list, it doesn't make sense to
think "but hey, they don't know I removed $FOO last week, so their list isn't
100% accurate!".

Both implementations mean you'll have to take their word on what they will and
won't do with the data, so there's really not much of a practical difference.

------
jfindley
Doesn't appear to mention metadata at all.

While metadata is somewhat tangential to the actual encryption, it's still a
vital part of a truly secure messaging platform - who we talk to reveals quite
a lot about us.

I'm not sure how solvable this is without sacrificing the usability that makes
whatsapp as nice to use as it is, and I certainly don't want to take away from
how great it is that they've done this - but it is important not to lose sight
of the fact that encrypting the contents of your messages is only one part of
the puzzle.

~~~
edhelas
It's the same problem with Signal actually ;) All the communications of the
official clients are sent to some "official" Signal Amazon servers (see
[https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-
Android/blob/master...](https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-
Android/blob/master/build.gradle#L166-172)).

Doing end to end encryption is nice, but I really think that having a
decentralized AND standard architecture is also very important.

------
eeturunen
Too bad 8/10 of your contacts have automatic backups to iCloud or Google Drive
enabled. Kind of defeats the idea of "end-to-end". More like end-to-end-to-
cloud.

~~~
rtkwe
Apps can control the content that they backup to Google, I'm going to guess
Apple has something similar.

[http://developer.android.com/training/backup/autosyncapi.htm...](http://developer.android.com/training/backup/autosyncapi.html)

------
qetuo
That's nice. What I really want to know is, can Mark Zuckerberg read my
messages? Do WhatsApp servers have access to the private keys needed to
decrypt my communications? If the answer to those questions is "yes", then
it's great that we are now protected from most cybercriminals, but the NSA is
probably monitoring our messages. If the answer to those questions is "no", I
may actually decide to start using WhatsApp.

~~~
rmellow
They cannot read your messages. The entire idea behind this is to give them a
claim of technical infeasability if they are served with a warrant. However,
if there is/will be some sort of back door to cease encryption without the
user's knowledge, that's another matter which really would require it being
open source.

~~~
efdee
How will it being open source guarantee you that the app you downloaded from
the platform's store is using the exact same code?

~~~
dingo_bat
You can compile the binary yourself and match the SHA1 against the binary
downloaded from the store. It seems quite trivial.

~~~
MajesticHobo
It's not that easy. Due to toolchain and platform differences, there is no
guarantee that your compiler will produce the same binary as the official
distribution. This is why deterministic, reproducible builds are a growing
area of interest right now.

------
ekianjo
EFF recommending closed source clients, erm they just drop in my esteem.

~~~
vulpino
They deduct points as it's still open source. And they are more applauding the
fact that WhatsApp - probably the most widely used messaging app currently -
has adopted strong end to end encryption, something which other clients have
been loathe to do.

This is a win. To disregard everything that WhatsApp and Signal have
accomplished because WhatsApp isn't open source is silly.

~~~
sickbeard
No but to blindly trust in it is silly. Even openssl had a heart-bleed bug
that persisted for years without most people realizing it. All it takes is one
bug for the entire thing to be useless.

~~~
vulpino
And heartbleed is also than example of open source not being totally secure.
It was a bug that persisted for years before it was found - and OpenSSL is
open source.

It's just as foolish to blindly trust OSS. There will always be holes - the
main point to OSS is not to combat these, as they will exist regardless.
Rather, it is so one might know exactly what they're installing/using, without
having to trust the corporation behind it.

~~~
sickbeard
no it's foolish to trust something that hasn't been independently reviewed.
How can EFF recommend something that hasn't even been subjected to an
independent security audit?

------
1024core
But WhatsApp requires a phone number, and requires that the recipient (of your
message) have your number in their contacts list (or at least you should have
their number in your contacts). Once your number (and your contacts') have
been leaked to WhatsApp, enough metadata has been leaked to make communication
risky.

Why doesn't WhatsApp allow anonymous communication? I should be able to create
ephemeral WhatsApp "IDs", and anyome who knows my "ID" should be able to
communicate with me anonymously and securely, no strings attached.

------
confusedjs
This is a bit weird. I don't believe WhatsApp are lying but there's absolutely
no proof they're not.

I could release a closed source app with a bunch of padlocks in it and
copy/paste their white paper and have exactly the same level of proof of
security. Would I get a 7/10 from EFF?

~~~
ikeboy
If you had the credibility of a billion dollar company behind you saying that
you're not making it up, then probably.

~~~
teddyh
I didn’t know credibility was measured in dollars.

~~~
ikeboy
Reputational damage is higher for entities with more money. Therefore their
credibility of not doing something that causes reputational damage is higher.

~~~
pdkl95
> Reputational damage is higher for entities with more money.

In what world? Big business figured out a long time ago that most of the time
their bad actions _won 't be noticed_ by most people. The rest can often be
fixed with some inexpensive spin and PR. Their reputation is only damaged when
a scandal is _very_ large and in the right place and time to be noticed.

A "billion dollar company" necessarily has a strong profit motive. It's also
subject to the codes and regulations of the country in which they operate. The
former damages their credibility (they will do what is profitable, not what is
moral), and the latter makes communication platforms suspect (government
involvement).

Of course, we don't have to speculate - this is Facebook. They are not only
part of Prism, but their entire business is based on surveillance. Not only do
they have _zero_ credibility for respecting privacy, they are actively
_hostile_.

~~~
ikeboy
You're disputing that it causes reputational damage, not that reputational
damage scales with money.

I'm _not_ saying that they'd lose reputation from "not respecting privacy".
That's not considered that bad by the general public. I'm saying that they'd
lose reputation from "claiming to release a feature while lying through their
teeth about it".

------
shaggy
It's important to point out that all the Whisper Systems code is open source
([https://github.com/whispersystems/](https://github.com/whispersystems/)). So
if you have concerns, go read their code. Some of the best minds in security
have, and they've come away with good things to say. There's a desktop version
of Signal coming, which I'd personally be inclined to use over WhatsApp, but
this is still a fantastic move.

------
lazyjones
It's an improvement, but proper end-to-end encryption on unsafe devices is
about as useful as seat belts on an airplane.

~~~
decasteve
So it protects you from bad turbulence but in a catastrophe you are still
screwed.

------
lifeisstillgood
I am still trying to wrap my head around privacy in the modern age, and this
triggered something for me - this is the end of the privacy-at-a-distance
problem.

There is a large body of law around making distance communication private
("secure in ones papers" I think is the phrase from American law. Not allowing
people to steam open your letters etc)

This move, which I am including the inevitable "pgp emails using whatsapp
collected public/private keys" seems destined to end the problem - two hundred
years of law, one code release.

Really sure an email app will be next now they are building a base of secure
keys

Edit: it's now the purview of regulation to require me to keep / handover
private conversations as pre-Snowden and that seems a good thing. It forces
surveillance to be active and open once again

------
SeanDav
I am so cynical (or is that realistic?) these days, that I would not trust the
encryption on WhatsApp as far as I can throw a large, adult saltwater
crocodile.

~~~
kasey_junk
They implemented a known & vetted encryption protocol with expert consultation
from the outside.

Its one of the most widely distributed apps in the world & thus likely to have
lots of people looking at it.

If you don't trust it, is there any possible encryption scheme you would
trust?

~~~
darklajid
I think the general trust issues people have are

\- metadata / contact lists in the hand of Facebook

\- a proprietary binary that _claims_ to use said encryption schemes

Scenarios that you could come up with:

The next version of WhatsApp sends unencrypted data again.

WhatsApp encrypts for your recipient just fine, but also encrypts the same
message for the great Facebook skeleton key.

Basically trust is a bigger problem than you acknowledge here, I think. If you
trust the encryption scheme, even the specific encryption implementation, then
you still need to trust the (binary, closed) application. Ignoring the
metadata issue completely for now.

~~~
rtkwe
>The next version of WhatsApp sends unencrypted data again. >WhatsApp encrypts
for your recipient just fine, but also encrypts the same message for the great
Facebook skeleton key.

Both of these can and would show up in an analysis of the code.

------
sleepychu
web.whatsapp.com still works, so clearly it's possible for something outside
my phone to gain access to my phone generated keys. That doesn't seem
backdoorable to me /s.

~~~
pfg
WhatsApp Web communicates directly with your phone. You have to authorize the
session from within the app. Communication between your browser and the app is
end-to-end encrypted.

~~~
sleepychu
I hadn't thought about re-encrypting the messages for end to end communication
with the browser so it's a plus that the phone doesn't have to give away its
keys _but_ there exists a mechanism for the phone to retransmit the messages,
because we can't see the source we have no idea if there's a way for WhatsApp
to trigger this remotely and as such create a back door.

~~~
pfg
The existence of this feature has no implications on the question of whether
or not there's a backdoor in the client. The current implementation requires
approval by the _client_. A hypothetical backdoor could be anywhere, and you
wouldn't know about it unless you check the bytecode.

------
tinus_hn
This is quite a big win for privacy. If you use Whisper, Tor or most of the
other privacy minded communications mediums, you are in a small minority so
you stand out. Because a very large part of the population is using Whatsapp
this allows you to communicate privately without standing out.

------
darkhorn
What happens when I log on to WhatsApp Web? How they send my private key from
my phone to my web browser?

~~~
nickik
They do not. They create a e2e connection between your phone and your browser.
Everything goes threw the phone.

~~~
osweiller
To post a follow-up comment, what happens when you lose your phone, or simply
move to a new phone? Presumably you've lost all of your private keys (I
mean...obviously they must not upload them or this would all be farce),
message history, etc, right?

~~~
tinus_hn
Your message history is lost unless you back it up yourself. Your contacts
receive a message stating you changed the key once you send them a message or
they send you one. I'd presume any messages that were sent before you
activated the new key, but not received yet, cannot be decrypted any more.

I do not know how this works with push messages though; it used to be such
that these can only be sent as-is so the server would need the key.

------
antihero
Has the WhatsApp code been audited by trusted third parties? I know it's not
quite as good as it being open source, but if we had people we trust audit it,
that seems like a good step. Also, disassembly and teardown.

I think something this big needs people to really really scrutinise it.

------
gcr
How does the WhatsApp encryption model differ from Apple's iMessage encryption
model?

\- In iMessage, Apple handles key distribution, so if I'm in your contacts, I
know the keys for all of your Apple devices. (I'm guessing the private key
stays on the device, but I'm not sure).

\- iMessage seems to provide no way of verifying someone's key fingerprint.

\- On the other hand, whatsApp seems to force you and your contacts to meet at
a Starbucks so you can distribute and sign each other's public keys.
Interesting.

What other differences are there?

(to make this easier, let's assume that both companies implemented the system
the way they claim they did)

~~~
osweiller
The app automatically distributes public keys, to my knowledge, and the QR
code is merely a validation mechanism to ensure that no MITM is substituting
keys.

The EFF seems to think the QR code thing is the bee's knees. In practice, I
would wager less than 0.1% of users will make use of that functionality. It's
more of a placebo.

~~~
tinus_hn
If there is widespread snooping even a small percentage of users verifying
their keys will expose it.

~~~
osweiller
If there was widespread snooping, it would imply either WhatsApp collaboration
or compromise, in which case the app could show whatever they wanted it to
show (or they could just upload all of the private keys, which they may very
well do in any case).

However I was talking about QR code versus the widely known fingerprint. The
EFF seems to think the QR code is just a huge improvement, but I just don't
think it will see any usage at all over the fingerprint, but instead it
provides the illusion of security ala "look there's this complex thing...and
some people must be validating it...so I'll just trust it."

------
mark_l_watson
Fantastic news - gets us closer to most Internet traffic being encrypted.

I have seen complaints that meta data is not hidden, that is, there is a
record with who you communicate with.

I might have an unpopular opinion here, but I don't think that having the meta
data unhidden is in general such a bad thing. I am happy having my
communications secure but having who I communicate with potentially public
knowledge. Fair compromise.

For whistleblowers, protecting metadata is important, so use something else.

------
daveloyall
Garden path questions:

What's the easiest way to get a copy of your own WhatsApp private key from
your phone?

What's the easiest way to get a copy of your friend's WhatsApp private key
from their phone?

What if the phone is rooted, or you can root it?

What if they won't hand you the phone?

What if they are on your specially built wifi?

What if you have a fake cell tower?

What if you have a real cell tower?

What if you have a different makes/models of phone?

for fun: s/phone/debian laptop/g

------
nxzero
Get the sense that EFF didn't even talk to any of the parties involved before
posting their review, and to me, given how much weight they carry in the
community, it's unclear why they didn't.

------
darkhorn
Why some people got "you are end to end encrypted with your friend" while
their same friend got "the connection is not end to end encrypted with your
friend"?

~~~
mrSugar
Because one end in this "end-to-end" is you, and the other is Facebook's
government-facing data storage.

------
jsprogrammer
Is there a way to build and deploy whatsapp from source?

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sickbeard
What? How can you give it 6/7 stars if you don't even know what holes are in
the code?

~~~
evgen
Perhaps by knowing that the distributed binaries will be disassembled and
inspected? The same way it would have to be examined even if there was a
GitHub repo out there claiming to be the code used?

~~~
osweiller
You've made this claim multiple times now. Do you really honestly believe that
disassembled binary code sees the same scrutiny or gained confidence that open
source code does? Have you ever analyzed disassembled code?

It is non-trivial. No one is going to disassemble this and say "Yup, it
passes". That doesn't happen.

~~~
evgen
As a matter of fact I am certain they will be dissassembled and examined. For
the bounty, for the PR and noteriety if you can find a bug or be the one to
star in the "<big company> screwed up or lied to us" story of the week. In
general, for lots of reasons that seem to motivate a select crowd who have the
skills to actually pull this off.

If you have the source code it makes the disassembly and examination of whatis
distributed a lot easier, but it is not a necessary pre-requisite.

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sschueller
I hope I can get my friends to switch to actor IM [1] or some other open
source solution that doesn't suck. In the end all these chat systems turn into
crap full of ads even if they aren't spying on you.

[1] [https://actor.im/](https://actor.im/)

~~~
edhelas
Seems centralized and doesn't rely on a standard. If I were you, I would
forget this solution as well.

~~~
nickik
You can set up your own server. They want to devlop a federated protocol. So
they are the only ones that actually have stated a goal to devlop something
like that. OWS would probebly do it as well if they had the time and money.

They already have the best clients in the buissness, if they manage to get the
crypto and the federation right, it would be fantastic. They also have some
support for using their web and desktop clients with email. I wish the Actor
guys the best of luck.

~~~
edhelas
"They want to develop a federated protocol". There is already one, it's a IETF
standard, deployed accross the globe and have already hundreds of clients and
several serious servers : XMPP.

~~~
nickik
I just restated what they said, if you are so convinced that XMPP would solve
all their problems, then I suggest you go to them.

I dought that they don't know already [1], and I also think they have put a
lot of thought into spending their money on devloping everything again.

[1] [https://github.com/actorapp/actor-
platform](https://github.com/actorapp/actor-platform)

Actor Messaging platform, modern replacement for Jabber/ejabberd

