WhatsApp To Offer End-to-End Encryption

Posted by timothy on Thursday November 20, 2014 @02:20AM from the trend-worth-extending dept.

L-One-L-One (173461) writes In a surprise move, nine months after being bought by Facebook, WhatsApp has begun rolling out end-to-end encryption for its users. With true end-to-end encryption data becomes unaccessible to admins of WhatsApp or law enforcement authorities. This new feature first proposed on Android only has been developed in cooperation with Open Whisper Systems, based on TextSecure. With hundreds of million users, WhatsApp becomes by far the largest secure messaging application. FBI Director James Comey might not be pleased. Do you have a current favorite for encrypted online chat?

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Re:FBI Director James Comey may not care. by Aqualung812 · 2014-11-20 02:36 · Score: 4, Insightful

What root console? If it is really END TO END, then WhatsApp can't see the data either.

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The problem is always the client by MobyDisk · 2014-11-20 02:50 · Score: 3, Insightful

This really only works if the client is open source. Otherwise, you don't know that the client doesn't send the keys through a side channel or store them somewhere.