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People aren't using WhatsApp to replace GPG with a carefully-curated web of trust. They're using it to replace SMS which can be surveilled both en masse by gove

by stouset 10y ago

People aren't using WhatsApp to replace GPG with a carefully-curated web of trust. They're using it to replace SMS which can be surveilled both en masse by governments and telecoms, and surveilled by individuals savvy enough to set up a fake cell tower. WhatsApp is an unqualified success in this regard. That it makes trade-offs unsuitable for dissidents of world governments does not diminish this.

lmm 10y ago
To the extent that it's displacing SMS, great - anything with transport encryption is better than SMS. To the extent that it's displacing Skype/Facebook Messenger/..., meh - if it's not actually secure against a hostile Facebook (and they have no intention of fixing the flaw) then it's not really any better than anything that uses SSL. To the extent that people using it assume it's secure against a hostile Facebook when it isn't, that is terrible. Fake security is worse than no security.
- stouset 10y ago
  > To the extent that it's displacing SMS, great This is reassuringly the overwhelming majority of the market that WhatsApp is eating into. > To the extent that it's displacing Skype/Facebook Messenger/..., meh And in this case, it's at least not worse. Although I will argue it's still much better. As has been discussed elsewhere ad infinitum, this tradeoff in WhatsApp still allows savvy users to enable notifications. And the fact that some people will do this (and it stands to reason, the people who do this are precisely the ones who are likely to be targeted) is an effective deterrent for doing it at all. > To the extent that people using it assume it's secure against a hostile Facebook when it isn't, that is terrible. Fake security is worse than no security. Security is not a boolean. It is unequivocally more secure than Facebook Messenger, which we can assume is not E2E encrypted. Facebook or governments with appropriate authority can surveil this en masse. They can not do this for WhatsApp messages. Attempts to surveil these messages even at a small scale carry a high risk of tipping their hand that they're doing this surveillance at all. 1/7th of the world's population is now using E2E-encrypted messaging thanks to collaboration between WhatsApp and OWS. The number of people who need to consider Facebook or governments with control over it an active threat against them perhaps number in the hundreds to low thousands, and this affords good (if not perfect) protection even to them through a toggle, and some protection even to those who don't enable the toggle. Anyone who is in this last group is either aware of these limitations, or is completely fucked anyway because achieving practical security against a determined, well-funded governmental adversary is frighteningly difficult and requires ongoing effort and attention.
  - lmm 10y ago
    > 1/7th of the world's population is now using E2E-encrypted messaging thanks to collaboration between WhatsApp and OWS. The number of people who need to consider Facebook or governments with control over it an active threat against them perhaps number in the hundreds to low thousands Agreed, but those few are the only people for whom E2E-encrypted is a substantial advantage over transport-encrypted. > Anyone who is in this last group is either aware of these limitations Largely thanks to the good offices of the Guardian. WhatsApp claimed to have true E2E security. And it doesn't. The public needed to be told.
    - stouset 10y ago
      > Agreed, but those few are the only people for whom E2E-encrypted is a substantial advantage over transport-encrypted. I could not disagree more. This is the difference between large-scale, passive, implicit surveillance of an entire population and small-scale, active, explicit interception of handfuls of individuals at best. > WhatsApp claimed to have true E2E security. And it doesn't. The public needed to be told. You have to stop treating security like it's a binary thing. Threat models are important. It does have E2E security, it just has a tradeoff that allows for the interception of a single message by a nation-state attacker, with the probability of this event being detected increasing dramatically with the number of users they do. This is not even close the same thing as not having true E2E security.
      - lmm 10y ago
        > This is the difference between large-scale, passive, implicit surveillance of an entire population and small-scale, active, explicit interception of handfuls of individuals at best. The large-scale passive surveillance you're talking about in the transport-encryption case could only be happening with the provider's cooperation. I can maybe see Facebook/Microsoft/etc. cooperating with the NSA in that way, but certainly not with the governments mentioned in the letter's rhetoric. And note that a cooperating WhatsApp could do large-scale, passive, implicit surveillance of WhatsApp metadata and use that for targeting active attacks. > You have to stop treating security like it's a binary thing. Threat models are important. It does have E2E security, it just has a tradeoff that allows for the interception of a single message by a nation-state attacker, with the probability of this event being detected increasing dramatically with the number of users they do. An attacker with control of WhatsApp could continue to MitM indefinitely, no? They would be detected only when the users met up and compared security codes, which I suspect even dissidents wouldn't be doing frequently. I agree that WhatsApp is probably more secure, and certainly no less secure, than apps with zero effort at E2E (I more-or-less endorse the preference order given at https://copperhead.co/android/docs/usage_guide https://copperhead.co/android/docs/usage_guide ). But this is a real vulnerability that makes WhatsApp substantially less secure than was previously thought and claimed, and substantially less secure than what someone who just heard "end-to-end encrypted" would expect. It needed to be publicised.

by stouset 10y ago

lmm 10y ago

To the extent that it's displacing SMS, great - anything with transport encryption is better than SMS. To the extent that it's displacing Skype/Facebook Messenger/..., meh - if it's not actually secure against a hostile Facebook (and they have no intention of fixing the flaw) then it's not really any better than anything that uses SSL. To the extent that people using it assume it's secure against a hostile Facebook when it isn't, that is terrible. Fake security is worse than no security.

stouset 10y ago
> To the extent that it's displacing SMS, great This is reassuringly the overwhelming majority of the market that WhatsApp is eating into. > To the extent that it's displacing Skype/Facebook Messenger/..., meh And in this case, it's at least not worse. Although I will argue it's still much better. As has been discussed elsewhere ad infinitum, this tradeoff in WhatsApp still allows savvy users to enable notifications. And the fact that some people will do this (and it stands to reason, the people who do this are precisely the ones who are likely to be targeted) is an effective deterrent for doing it at all. > To the extent that people using it assume it's secure against a hostile Facebook when it isn't, that is terrible. Fake security is worse than no security. Security is not a boolean. It is unequivocally more secure than Facebook Messenger, which we can assume is not E2E encrypted. Facebook or governments with appropriate authority can surveil this en masse. They can not do this for WhatsApp messages. Attempts to surveil these messages even at a small scale carry a high risk of tipping their hand that they're doing this surveillance at all. 1/7th of the world's population is now using E2E-encrypted messaging thanks to collaboration between WhatsApp and OWS. The number of people who need to consider Facebook or governments with control over it an active threat against them perhaps number in the hundreds to low thousands, and this affords good (if not perfect) protection even to them through a toggle, and some protection even to those who don't enable the toggle. Anyone who is in this last group is either aware of these limitations, or is completely fucked anyway because achieving practical security against a determined, well-funded governmental adversary is frighteningly difficult and requires ongoing effort and attention.
- lmm 10y ago
  > 1/7th of the world's population is now using E2E-encrypted messaging thanks to collaboration between WhatsApp and OWS. The number of people who need to consider Facebook or governments with control over it an active threat against them perhaps number in the hundreds to low thousands Agreed, but those few are the only people for whom E2E-encrypted is a substantial advantage over transport-encrypted. > Anyone who is in this last group is either aware of these limitations Largely thanks to the good offices of the Guardian. WhatsApp claimed to have true E2E security. And it doesn't. The public needed to be told.
  - stouset 10y ago
    > Agreed, but those few are the only people for whom E2E-encrypted is a substantial advantage over transport-encrypted. I could not disagree more. This is the difference between large-scale, passive, implicit surveillance of an entire population and small-scale, active, explicit interception of handfuls of individuals at best. > WhatsApp claimed to have true E2E security. And it doesn't. The public needed to be told. You have to stop treating security like it's a binary thing. Threat models are important. It does have E2E security, it just has a tradeoff that allows for the interception of a single message by a nation-state attacker, with the probability of this event being detected increasing dramatically with the number of users they do. This is not even close the same thing as not having true E2E security.
    - lmm 10y ago
      > This is the difference between large-scale, passive, implicit surveillance of an entire population and small-scale, active, explicit interception of handfuls of individuals at best. The large-scale passive surveillance you're talking about in the transport-encryption case could only be happening with the provider's cooperation. I can maybe see Facebook/Microsoft/etc. cooperating with the NSA in that way, but certainly not with the governments mentioned in the letter's rhetoric. And note that a cooperating WhatsApp could do large-scale, passive, implicit surveillance of WhatsApp metadata and use that for targeting active attacks. > You have to stop treating security like it's a binary thing. Threat models are important. It does have E2E security, it just has a tradeoff that allows for the interception of a single message by a nation-state attacker, with the probability of this event being detected increasing dramatically with the number of users they do. An attacker with control of WhatsApp could continue to MitM indefinitely, no? They would be detected only when the users met up and compared security codes, which I suspect even dissidents wouldn't be doing frequently. I agree that WhatsApp is probably more secure, and certainly no less secure, than apps with zero effort at E2E (I more-or-less endorse the preference order given at https://copperhead.co/android/docs/usage_guide https://copperhead.co/android/docs/usage_guide ). But this is a real vulnerability that makes WhatsApp substantially less secure than was previously thought and claimed, and substantially less secure than what someone who just heard "end-to-end encrypted" would expect. It needed to be publicised.