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.
Shocking.
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.
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.
It will be interesting to see if this goes anywhere. It looks like the claims are based on specific aspects of California law (put simply: wiretapping, privacy, and deceptive business practices). Do they have a strong case? I don’t know, not worth my personal time to research state law on these issues.
Is there enough to go to court? Certainly the lawyers think so, and I agree. If Meta is claiming E2EE (which it is) and then immediately undercutting that by re-transmitting large numbers of messages to itself (which is alleged), that sure feels deceptive to me, and it’s easy to think that a jury might agree.
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 :((
Jeremy Hunter IX
Edit: IX.
The Ninth
Just like Cher (which is short for Cheremy).
Your secret is safe with us and our 36,893 affiliates.
ta
Can confirm, chemicalprophet is the best password manager I’ve ever used.
Ah! You did your own research!
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.
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.
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.
Why am I not surprised? Whether there is no end-end encryption, they have a copy of every key, get the decrypted messages from the client, or can ask the client to surrender the key - it does not matter.
The point is that they never intended to leave users a secure environment. That would make the three latter agencies angry, and would bar themselves from rather interesting data on users.
Just assume any digital platform you’re using isn’t safe at this point.
I thought they stole Signal’s code ( I know it’s open Source but still … Taking free code to profit from it is quite a fucktard move) to achieve e2e encryption? Who could have thought they weren’t honest in their intention!?
/S
They used Signal’s code for the encryption and decryption, they just also took a copy of everyone’s cryptographic keys with their own code.
They only lied by omission.
Slashdot. I have a very low 3 digit UID. I followed Rob Malda’s blog before he registered the domain.
I remember having Netscape open on the site and reading it. I walked a couple blocks to by a pack of smokes. Got back home and refreshed the page. Noticed a new post with site registration available, so of course I did.
To this day I still get password reminder requests to my email that I never sent.
I still comment and sometimes get some people replying noticing the low UID.
Silly I know, but it’s cool to me anyway.
If I am not adding my own private key to the app, like in Tox, I don’t trust their encryption.
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.
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.
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
Well, Whatsapp uses signal. Bad timing
It only uses some of signal’s code. Not necessarily the OOTB key storage and security.
How?
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.
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.
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
Unless proof is given, assume troll
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
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.
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
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
The biggest news is that Slashdot is still alive.
+5 insightful
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.
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
Ah yes, good old E2E AWA3E.
“End to end, and we are also an end”.
I guessed you meant “end to end, as well as 3rd end” before reading on.
The E is for “Everyone”
The S is for Security.
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.
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.
