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Key verification is critical to prevent a Man in the Middle attack, in which a third party pretends to be a contact you know. However, if you are a high-risk user whose security might be compromised by a single revealed message, getting notification after-the-fact poses risks.
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If your threat model can tolerate being notified after a potential security incident, then turning this setting on may suffice. Note that even when you turn this setting on, you will be notified of key change notifications only after the message in question has been sent. To be notified, users have to search for the setting “Security Notifications” (found under “Security” in the “Account” section of your user settings) and manually switch it on. On WhatsApp, however, if your contact changes keys, this fact is hidden away by default. If the encryption key of a contact changes, a secure messaging app should notify you and prompt you to accept the change. In order for your communications to be truly secure, any contact you chat with must do the same. In SSD, we have advised users to never back up their messages to the cloud, since that would deliver unencrypted copies of your message log to the cloud provider. Upon first install, WhatsApp prompts you to choose how often you wish to backup your messages: daily, weekly, monthly, or never. In order to back messages up in a way that makes them restorable without a passphrase in the future, these backups need to be stored unencrypted at rest. WhatsApp provides a mechanism to back messages up to the cloud. The changes in this surrounding functionality are where we have identified various places where a user can dangerously overestimate WhatsApp’s security.īelow we describe our four greatest concerns in more detail.
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Every application includes various components: the user interface, the code that interacts with the operating system, the business model behind the whole operation-and secure messaging apps are no exception. Instead, we are concerned about WhatsApp’s security despite the best efforts of the Signal Protocol. In fact, we hope that the protocol WhatsApp uses becomes more widespread in the future. We take no issue with the way this encryption is performed. In crypto parlance, these guarantees are termed end-to-end encryption, authenticity, and forward secrecy. This gives a high assurance that messages between you and your contacts are encrypted such that even WhatsApp can’t read them, that your contacts' identities can be verified, and that even if someone steals your encryption keys and is able to tap your connection, they can’t decrypt messages you’ve already sent. Under the hood, WhatsApp uses the best-in-breed for encrypted messaging: the Signal Protocol. This is unfortunate precisely because of WhatsApp's security strengths. This is especially true since WhatsApp’s announcement that it would be changing their user agreement regarding data sharing with the rest of Facebook’s services. In the case of WhatsApp, it is getting harder and harder to adequately explain its pitfalls in a way that is clear, understandable, and actionable for users. In Surveillance Self Defense (SSD), we aim to highlight reliable technologies while adding caveats to explain how their various strengths and weaknesses affect user privacy and security. No technology is 100 percent secure for every user, and there are always trade-offs among security, usability, and other considerations.
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UPDATE (1/26/17): In response to news about WhatsApp's key management choices, we have added additional information about related trade-offs under "Key change notifications."Īfter careful consideration, we have decided to add additional warnings and caveats about using WhatsApp to our Surveillance Self Defense guide.