5 ms·

They're simply providing a better user experience. The Saudis blocked encrypted calls, and users would have wait staring at frustrating repeated timeouts and lo

They're simply providing a better user experience. The Saudis blocked encrypted calls, and users would have wait staring at frustrating repeated timeouts and long 'connecting' hangs. Therefore Whatsapp simply said OK, let's just improve the users experience by giving them an immediate error informing them.

captainmuon 10y ago
Couldn't someone with WhatsApp/Facebook's resources find a way around the blockage? Write a bunch of different protocols and switch randomly - or use steganography - use machine learning to evade the block - buy a bunch of existing apps and hide the data in their protocols - put up a fake weak encryption, detect "dissident" talk, and in that case generate a long nonsense recording for the censors from the voices of the speakers, hiding the true message steganographically :-) - or basically anything they can come up with. Or - Saudi Arabia is not such a big market - make a complete theatric fuss about it and complain about human rights and so on, close all FB and WhatsApp connections and burn all bridges, and milk it for publicity. (Only being half serious here :-) but I would be really tempted to do something mischievous in their case rather than comply.)
- fenesiistvan 10y ago
  There are already software specialized for this such as the mizu VoIP tunneling and encryption which works with the SIP/RTP protocols: https://www.mizu-voip.com/Software/VoIPTunnel.aspx https://www.mizu-voip.com/Software/VoIPTunnel.aspx
- dreamfactory2 10y ago
  Governments and companies are very much on the same team these days (think of it as a one party state with occasional internal disagreements and manouverings) - so there won't be anything 'mischievous' going on from those quarters
dmix 10y ago
_insert quote about the simpler explanation being far more likely than a nefarious one here_
- Raed667 10y ago
  Simpler explanation: KSA threatened to block all whatsup (and maybe even facebook) if they don't help them.
sp332 10y ago
That doesn't explain why they lied about it.
eridius 10y ago
The gist explicitly claims that's not possible. Specifically, it claims that there's no way for the Saudi teleco to distinguish encrypted phone calls from encrypted messages, and since you can send encrypted messages to Saudi users, there's no technical reason why you can't also call them. The implication is that if WhatsApp did allow the calls, the Saudi telecos might block both calls and messages (since they can't distinguish them), and so WhatsApp disallows calls to avoid provoking them. And the OP's point is that WhatsApp should detect whether the user is actually in-country and allow the calls if they're in another country (since the Saudi telecos won't matter there).
- DominikR 10y ago
  You can definitely distinguish with near 100% reliability if someone is messaging or calling, even if there is encryption involved. All you need to do is profile for relatively constant data transfer rates over the course of many minutes that exceed a very low minimum. If Whatsapp uses a media proxy for calls then you could just trigger on connections made to these servers where these data transfers in question occur. But even if they don't use a media proxy they'll the clients will connect to specific IP's for call signalling and that's when you'll also know that a call was attempted. I'm neither defending Saudi Arabia nor Whatsapp, just wanted to let you know that there are very simple ways to detect calls. I'm sure that there are even better, much more advanced techniques that are currently in use by both oppressive (and likely our) governments.
  - eridius 10y ago
    Detecting calls like that would be for detecting calls in-progress, not for shutting them down during the initial handshake, which is what the gist claims is WhatsApp's explanation.
    - DominikR 10y ago
      My point was that this is one way to detect the IP where the client connects to for calls as call signalling, call media transfer and chat messaging all connect to different IP's. Once you have that you can block media transfer, or if the clients use peer to peer media transfer at least block the call signalling. After this it is only a matter of keeping the list of IP's updated which you could easily do by ongoing logging of bandwidth used. Bandwidth usage pops up in your logs that somehow resembles the profile of a call - investigate by doing a simple test and then block the IP.
pandog 10y ago
Whilst it may be a better user experience for those with Saudi numbers in Saudi Arabia (calls would be blocked anyway) it is a much worse user experience for those with Saudi numbers not in Saudi Arabia (calls would work fine, but are blocked by WhatsaApp). Maybe it's just a use case they missed - but quite a significant one!

captainmuon 10y ago

Couldn't someone with WhatsApp/Facebook's resources find a way around the blockage? Write a bunch of different protocols and switch randomly - or use steganography - use machine learning to evade the block - buy a bunch of existing apps and hide the data in their protocols - put up a fake weak encryption, detect "dissident" talk, and in that case generate a long nonsense recording for the censors from the voices of the speakers, hiding the true message steganographically :-) - or basically anything they can come up with. Or - Saudi Arabia is not such a big market - make a complete theatric fuss about it and complain about human rights and so on, close all FB and WhatsApp connections and burn all bridges, and milk it for publicity. (Only being half serious here :-) but I would be really tempted to do something mischievous in their case rather than comply.)

fenesiistvan 10y ago
There are already software specialized for this such as the mizu VoIP tunneling and encryption which works with the SIP/RTP protocols: https://www.mizu-voip.com/Software/VoIPTunnel.aspx https://www.mizu-voip.com/Software/VoIPTunnel.aspx
dreamfactory2 10y ago
Governments and companies are very much on the same team these days (think of it as a one party state with occasional internal disagreements and manouverings) - so there won't be anything 'mischievous' going on from those quarters

dmix 10y ago

_insert quote about the simpler explanation being far more likely than a nefarious one here_

Raed667 10y ago
Simpler explanation: KSA threatened to block all whatsup (and maybe even facebook) if they don't help them.

sp332 10y ago

That doesn't explain why they lied about it.

eridius 10y ago

The gist explicitly claims that's not possible. Specifically, it claims that there's no way for the Saudi teleco to distinguish encrypted phone calls from encrypted messages, and since you can send encrypted messages to Saudi users, there's no technical reason why you can't also call them. The implication is that if WhatsApp did allow the calls, the Saudi telecos might block both calls and messages (since they can't distinguish them), and so WhatsApp disallows calls to avoid provoking them. And the OP's point is that WhatsApp should detect whether the user is actually in-country and allow the calls if they're in another country (since the Saudi telecos won't matter there).

DominikR 10y ago
You can definitely distinguish with near 100% reliability if someone is messaging or calling, even if there is encryption involved. All you need to do is profile for relatively constant data transfer rates over the course of many minutes that exceed a very low minimum. If Whatsapp uses a media proxy for calls then you could just trigger on connections made to these servers where these data transfers in question occur. But even if they don't use a media proxy they'll the clients will connect to specific IP's for call signalling and that's when you'll also know that a call was attempted. I'm neither defending Saudi Arabia nor Whatsapp, just wanted to let you know that there are very simple ways to detect calls. I'm sure that there are even better, much more advanced techniques that are currently in use by both oppressive (and likely our) governments.
- eridius 10y ago
  Detecting calls like that would be for detecting calls in-progress, not for shutting them down during the initial handshake, which is what the gist claims is WhatsApp's explanation.
  - DominikR 10y ago
    My point was that this is one way to detect the IP where the client connects to for calls as call signalling, call media transfer and chat messaging all connect to different IP's. Once you have that you can block media transfer, or if the clients use peer to peer media transfer at least block the call signalling. After this it is only a matter of keeping the list of IP's updated which you could easily do by ongoing logging of bandwidth used. Bandwidth usage pops up in your logs that somehow resembles the profile of a call - investigate by doing a simple test and then block the IP.

pandog 10y ago

Whilst it may be a better user experience for those with Saudi numbers in Saudi Arabia (calls would be blocked anyway) it is a much worse user experience for those with Saudi numbers not in Saudi Arabia (calls would work fine, but are blocked by WhatsaApp). Maybe it's just a use case they missed - but quite a significant one!