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> “We look forward to moving forward with those claims and note WhatsApp’s denials have all been carefully worded in a way that stops short of denying the centr

> “We look forward to moving forward with those claims and note WhatsApp’s denials have all been carefully worded in a way that stops short of denying the central allegation in the complaint – that Meta has the ability to read WhatsApp messages, regardless of its claims about end-to-end encryption.” My money is on the chats being end to end encrypted and separately uploaded to Facebook.

RajT88 9mo ago
Facebook messenger similarly claims to be end to end encrypted, and yet if it thinks you are sending a link to a pirate site, it "fails to send". I imagine there are a great many blacklisted sites which they shadow block, despite "not being able to read your messages". My pet conspiracy theory is that the "backup code" which "restores" encrypted messages is there to annoy you into installing the app instead of chatting on the web.
- loeg 9mo ago
  The client probably just downloads a blacklist of banned domains. That doesn't mean messages that are sent are not E2E encrypted.
  - RajT88 9mo ago
    Facebook has lost any benefit of doubt, imo.
    - loeg 9mo ago
      Baseless conspiracy theories just make yourself dumber; it doesn’t punish Facebook.
random3 9mo ago
That’s because they have such a good track record wrt to privacy? https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/California_Northern_District_Court/3--20-cv-08570/Klein_et_al_v._Meta_Platforms_Inc/docs/885.pdf https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/California_Northern_Distri...
- fn-mote 9mo ago
  That document is the dismissal of claims by an economist about Facebook’s privacy practices. I don’t see how it supports your argument.
  - random3 9mo ago
    these better? https://schakowsky.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/schakowsky.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/letter-to-meta-concerning-violation-of-android-privacy-protections.pdf https://schakowsky.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/schakowsky.h... https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/01/mad-meta-dont-let-them-collect-and-monetize-your-personal-data https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/01/mad-meta-dont-let-them...
guerrilla 9mo ago
> My money is on the chats being end to end encrypted and separately uploaded to Facebook. This is what I've suspected for a long time. I bet that's it. They can already read both ends, no need to b0rk the encryption. It's just them doing their job to protect you from fourth parties, not from themselves.
varenc 9mo ago
If this was happening en-masse, wouldn't this be discovered by the many people reverse engineering WhatsApp? Reverse engineering is hard sophisticated work, but given how popular WhatsApp is plenty of independent security researchers are doing it. I'm quite skeptical Meta could hide some malicious code in WhatsApp that's breaking the E2EE without it being discovered.
- beagle3 9mo ago
  This was happening en masse, perhaps still does - the cloud backup was unencrypted. Originally it was encrypted. Then, one day, Google stopped counting it towards your storage quota, but it became unencrypted. But even before that, Meta had the encryption keys (and probably still does). When you get a new phone, all you need is your phone number to retrieve the past chats from backup; nothing else. That proves, regardless of specifics, that Meta can read your chats - they can send it to any new phone. So it doesn’t really matter that it is E2EE in transit - they just have to wait for the daily backup, and they can read it then.
- palata 9mo ago
  Before that, Meta employees would know about it. Pretty convinced that someone would leak it.
- cosmicgadget 9mo ago
  Well they wouldn't be breaking e2ee, they'd be breaking the implicit promise of e2ee. The chats are still inaccessible to intermediaries, they'd just be stored elsewhere. Like Apple and Microsoft do. I am not familiar with the state of app RE. But between code obfuscators and the difficulty of distinguishing between 'normal' phone home data and user chats when doing static analysis... I'd say it's not out of the question.
- solenoid0937 9mo ago
  It would be trivial to discover and would be pretty big news in the security community. I'd wager most of these comments are from nontechnical people, or technical people that are very far removed from security.
gruez 9mo ago
>being end to end encrypted and separately uploaded to Facebook That's a cute loophole you thought up, but whatsapp's marketing is pretty unequivocal that they can't read your messages. >With end-to-end encryption on WhatsApp, your personal messages and calls are secured with a lock. Only you and the person you're talking to can read or listen to them, and no one else, not even WhatsApp https://www.whatsapp.com/ https://www.whatsapp.com/ That's not to say it's impossible that they are secretly uploading your messages, but the implication that they could be secretly doing so while not running afoul of their own claims because of cute word games, is outright false.
- conscion 9mo ago
  My guess is that they are end-to-end encrypted. And because of Facebook's scale that they're able to probabilisticly guess at what's in the encrypted messages (e.g.a message with X hash has Y probability of containing the word "shoes")
  - gruez 9mo ago
    That seems unlikely given that they use the signal protocol: https://signal.org/blog/whatsapp-complete/ https://signal.org/blog/whatsapp-complete/
  - stefs 9mo ago
    That would still be very close to educated mind reading
  - ghurtado 9mo ago
    > they're able to probabilisticly guess at That's not how encryption works at all. At least not any encryption used in the last 100 years. You'd probably have to go all the way back to the encryption methods of the Roman empire for that statement to make sense
- blindriver 9mo ago
  "We can't read your messages! They are encrypted on disk and we don't store the keys!" "What encryption do you use?" "DES."
matthewdgreen 9mo ago
I really doubt this. Any such upload would be visible inside the WhatsApp application, which would make it the world's most exciting (and relatively straightforward) RE project. You can even start with a Java app, so it's extra easy.
- cosmicgadget 9mo ago
  If you claim REing a flagship FAANG application is "extra easy", either they need to be laughed out of the room or you do.
  - martinralbrecht 9mo ago
    Note that WhatsApp as a web client, too: https://eprint.iacr.org/2025/794 https://eprint.iacr.org/2025/794
  - gruez 9mo ago
    Does FAANG apps have antidebug or code obfuscation? At least for google their apps are pretty lightly protected. The maximum extent of obfuscation is the standard compilation/optimization process that most apps go through (eg. r8 or proguard).
  - quesera 9mo ago
    Reverse engineering is easy when the source code is available. :) The difference between source code in a high-level language, and AArch64 machine language, is surmountable. The effort is made easier if you can focus on calls to the crypto and networking libraries.
    - cosmicgadget 9mo ago
      The source is available? Understanding program flow is very different from understanding the composition of data passing though the program.
      - quesera 9mo ago
steve_taylor 9mo ago
> My money is on the chats being end to end encrypted and separately uploaded to Facebook. If governments of various countries have compelled Meta to provide a backdoor and also required non-disclosure (e.g. a TCN secretly issued to Meta under Australia's Assistance and Access Act), this is how I imagined they would do it. It technically doesn't break encryption as the receiving device receives the encrypted message.
FabHK 9mo ago
It should be detectable if it sends twice the data.
- rurban 9mo ago
  It encrypts it to all the keys with the phone number registered for that user. Because users are switching phones, but keep their number. But each new WhatsApp app gets a new private key, the old key is not shared. This feature was added later, so the old WhatsApp devs wouldn't know. So it would be trivial to encrypt to the NSA key also, as done on Windows.

RajT88 9mo ago

Facebook messenger similarly claims to be end to end encrypted, and yet if it thinks you are sending a link to a pirate site, it "fails to send". I imagine there are a great many blacklisted sites which they shadow block, despite "not being able to read your messages". My pet conspiracy theory is that the "backup code" which "restores" encrypted messages is there to annoy you into installing the app instead of chatting on the web.

loeg 9mo ago
The client probably just downloads a blacklist of banned domains. That doesn't mean messages that are sent are not E2E encrypted.
- RajT88 9mo ago
  Facebook has lost any benefit of doubt, imo.
  - loeg 9mo ago
    Baseless conspiracy theories just make yourself dumber; it doesn’t punish Facebook.

random3 9mo ago

That’s because they have such a good track record wrt to privacy? https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/California_Northern_District_Court/3--20-cv-08570/Klein_et_al_v._Meta_Platforms_Inc/docs/885.pdf https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/California_Northern_Distri...

fn-mote 9mo ago
That document is the dismissal of claims by an economist about Facebook’s privacy practices. I don’t see how it supports your argument.
- random3 9mo ago
  these better? https://schakowsky.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/schakowsky.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/letter-to-meta-concerning-violation-of-android-privacy-protections.pdf https://schakowsky.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/schakowsky.h... https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/01/mad-meta-dont-let-them-collect-and-monetize-your-personal-data https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/01/mad-meta-dont-let-them...

guerrilla 9mo ago

> My money is on the chats being end to end encrypted and separately uploaded to Facebook. This is what I've suspected for a long time. I bet that's it. They can already read both ends, no need to b0rk the encryption. It's just them doing their job to protect you from fourth parties, not from themselves.

varenc 9mo ago

If this was happening en-masse, wouldn't this be discovered by the many people reverse engineering WhatsApp? Reverse engineering is hard sophisticated work, but given how popular WhatsApp is plenty of independent security researchers are doing it. I'm quite skeptical Meta could hide some malicious code in WhatsApp that's breaking the E2EE without it being discovered.

beagle3 9mo ago
This was happening en masse, perhaps still does - the cloud backup was unencrypted. Originally it was encrypted. Then, one day, Google stopped counting it towards your storage quota, but it became unencrypted. But even before that, Meta had the encryption keys (and probably still does). When you get a new phone, all you need is your phone number to retrieve the past chats from backup; nothing else. That proves, regardless of specifics, that Meta can read your chats - they can send it to any new phone. So it doesn’t really matter that it is E2EE in transit - they just have to wait for the daily backup, and they can read it then.
palata 9mo ago
Before that, Meta employees would know about it. Pretty convinced that someone would leak it.
cosmicgadget 9mo ago
Well they wouldn't be breaking e2ee, they'd be breaking the implicit promise of e2ee. The chats are still inaccessible to intermediaries, they'd just be stored elsewhere. Like Apple and Microsoft do. I am not familiar with the state of app RE. But between code obfuscators and the difficulty of distinguishing between 'normal' phone home data and user chats when doing static analysis... I'd say it's not out of the question.
solenoid0937 9mo ago
It would be trivial to discover and would be pretty big news in the security community. I'd wager most of these comments are from nontechnical people, or technical people that are very far removed from security.

gruez 9mo ago

>being end to end encrypted and separately uploaded to Facebook That's a cute loophole you thought up, but whatsapp's marketing is pretty unequivocal that they can't read your messages. >With end-to-end encryption on WhatsApp, your personal messages and calls are secured with a lock. Only you and the person you're talking to can read or listen to them, and no one else, not even WhatsApp https://www.whatsapp.com/ https://www.whatsapp.com/ That's not to say it's impossible that they are secretly uploading your messages, but the implication that they could be secretly doing so while not running afoul of their own claims because of cute word games, is outright false.

conscion 9mo ago
My guess is that they are end-to-end encrypted. And because of Facebook's scale that they're able to probabilisticly guess at what's in the encrypted messages (e.g.a message with X hash has Y probability of containing the word "shoes")
- gruez 9mo ago
  That seems unlikely given that they use the signal protocol: https://signal.org/blog/whatsapp-complete/ https://signal.org/blog/whatsapp-complete/
- stefs 9mo ago
  That would still be very close to educated mind reading
- ghurtado 9mo ago
  > they're able to probabilisticly guess at That's not how encryption works at all. At least not any encryption used in the last 100 years. You'd probably have to go all the way back to the encryption methods of the Roman empire for that statement to make sense
blindriver 9mo ago
"We can't read your messages! They are encrypted on disk and we don't store the keys!" "What encryption do you use?" "DES."

matthewdgreen 9mo ago

I really doubt this. Any such upload would be visible inside the WhatsApp application, which would make it the world's most exciting (and relatively straightforward) RE project. You can even start with a Java app, so it's extra easy.

cosmicgadget 9mo ago
If you claim REing a flagship FAANG application is "extra easy", either they need to be laughed out of the room or you do.
- martinralbrecht 9mo ago
  Note that WhatsApp as a web client, too: https://eprint.iacr.org/2025/794 https://eprint.iacr.org/2025/794
- gruez 9mo ago
  Does FAANG apps have antidebug or code obfuscation? At least for google their apps are pretty lightly protected. The maximum extent of obfuscation is the standard compilation/optimization process that most apps go through (eg. r8 or proguard).
- quesera 9mo ago
  Reverse engineering is easy when the source code is available. :) The difference between source code in a high-level language, and AArch64 machine language, is surmountable. The effort is made easier if you can focus on calls to the crypto and networking libraries.
  - cosmicgadget 9mo ago
    The source is available? Understanding program flow is very different from understanding the composition of data passing though the program.
    - quesera 9mo ago

steve_taylor 9mo ago

> My money is on the chats being end to end encrypted and separately uploaded to Facebook. If governments of various countries have compelled Meta to provide a backdoor and also required non-disclosure (e.g. a TCN secretly issued to Meta under Australia's Assistance and Access Act), this is how I imagined they would do it. It technically doesn't break encryption as the receiving device receives the encrypted message.

FabHK 9mo ago

It should be detectable if it sends twice the data.

rurban 9mo ago
It encrypts it to all the keys with the phone number registered for that user. Because users are switching phones, but keep their number. But each new WhatsApp app gets a new private key, the old key is not shared. This feature was added later, so the old WhatsApp devs wouldn't know. So it would be trivial to encrypt to the NSA key also, as done on Windows.