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Airline worker arrested after sharing photos of bomb damage in WhatsApp group
- wilburx3 6mo agoAnything Meta should be binned if you care about yourself.
- uyzstvqs 6mo agoThey didn't actually crack WhatsApp traffic. Someone in the group probably just reported it. WhatsApp's insecurities are that Meta has access to a full network graph of all users' contacts, and that it wants to upload an unencrypted backup to Google or Apple by default. If there was an actual backdoor in the closed-source crypto, I highly doubt they'd give Dubai police access to it.
- jmye 6mo agoI’ll preface this with agreeing that you’re probably correct. That said, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if Meta built an intentional backdoor, and that someone else (or many someone else’s) found it and was utilizing it.
- breisa 6mo agoIf such a backdoor exists, it is probably cryptographically secured to prevent "unauthorized" access. E.g. the xz backdoor was secured like that.
- svachalek 6mo agoOr that the government offered Meta $50 for a list of agitators and they said why not. Given Meta's track record it's totally on brand.
- righthand 6mo ago> They didn't actually crack WhatsApp traffic. Someone in the group probably just reported it. So you don’t know any of this? You have no proof someone in the group reported it. You have no proof they weren’t using a backdoor they found with or without Meta knowing this… You’re just here to defend Meta then?
- ljlolel 6mo agoIt’s just Occam’s razor chip out Way easier for one of a group of humans to report than for a conspiracy hack
- constantius 6mo agoThe poster is right, it's very unlikely that WA has been backdoored/cracked, and it seems obvious why. A backdoor to the world's largest messaging app would be extremely valuable: while it can exist, it's unlikely that it'd be so widely available the UAE police can use it for such insignificant cases. And because of its value, no one with access to it (the US, the UAE, Meta) would want it to become public knowledge through such an insignificant case, because everyone they really want to spy on would switch to Signal in a second.
- righthand 6mo agoIt’s weird that the notification backdoor never gets talked about, but your Whatsapp messages are decrypted in plain sight when the text content is shipped through the notification services. This is mentioned always for Signal but Whatsapp always gets a pass even though it’s a way more malicious company and indeed probably using that hole to profile/track it’s users. The only response is “oh no Whatsapp cant leak anything the security model of how chat messages are backed up is a-okay!”
- unethical_ban 6mo agoSignal got called out for it because it actually happened to a user with the police. Of course it affects all apps. It's also local, so irrelevant to the discussion of networked/encryption hacks someone alleged above.
- lamasery 6mo agoWhatsApp put a (weirdly tame and unremarkable?) image a friend of mine tried to post into review and ended up never letting it show up in a thread, the other day. He was able to post a screenshot of it sitting in his view of the thread, and the message about why it was temporarily delayed (it never showed up, though). This was in a chat of close friends, not one of those weird huge spammy groups of strangers or something. Nobody was using the report button on him, lol. We’re all in the US. WhatsApp has some level of awareness of the images you’re sharing, apparently.
- Cub3 6mo agoTurns out a marketing company doesn't care about your privacy go figure
- Someone1234 6mo ago> publishing information deemed harmful to state interests Is the charge, which I think kind of speaks for itself. Full on: "You embarrassed us, straight to jail." In most of the world such photos would be deemed of public interest and shared by the media then we'd reflect on if our routing is safe/correct and make proportional changes for safety. Not a big deal, nobody is fired, life moves on. I feel like actions like this are going to hurt the UAE themselves, because how can you improve if there is no dialog? No information to even start a dialog? A lot of hard conversations are NOT going to be had because I guess it is a state secret?
- throwanem 6mo ago[flagged]
- Someone1234 6mo agoI'm not American. America didn't even exist when most of the core social concepts I referenced were popularized, and it certainly wasn't in the 20th century. Also, very self-telling, that I said "UAE should do better for UAE's own future sake" to which you responded: "you want to take away UAE's sovereignty!" Hmm, very odd, that.
- miohtama 6mo ago
- m0llusk 6mo agoThis defensiveness just makes the situation worse. If they came across as at a disadvantage and doing their best that could attract help and admiration. Trying to cover things up while being hostile just makes them look like reactionary creeps with too much power. An unfortunate turn of events in any case.
- dijit 6mo agoThe headline makes it sound as if it could have been useful for terrorism or something. Like "how bombs affect airplanes". But the actual article is much more haunting.
- Esophagus4 6mo ago> Radha Stirling, chief executive of London-based advocacy group Detained in Dubai, said Dubai police had "explicitly confirmed they are conducting electronic surveillance operations capable of detecting private WhatsApp messages." Whoa.
- Marsymars 6mo agoTo be fair, an operation where you encourage people in group chats to report and share anything suspicious with police would be consistent with "electronic surveillance operations capable of detecting private WhatsApp messages."
- wildzzz 6mo agoAt least they're being honest about it. In other countries, they'll never say it outright.
- tbrownaw 6mo ago> Radha Stirling, chief executive of London-based advocacy group Detained in Dubai, said Dubai police had "explicitly confirmed they are conducting electronic surveillance operations capable of detecting private WhatsApp messages." And later it mentions that they "also" use the Pegasus spyware. Although I'm not sure I'd trust that as actual confirmation that this was a separate attack vector. Even if "someone in the chat leaked it" is AIUI the most common way something like this would happen.
- charliebwrites 6mo agoThis is why the First Amendment is so important
- pixl97 6mo agoEh, there was a lot of media censorship during WWII.
- tencentshill 6mo agoSo we give up our rights when at war? Why not always be at war? Eastasia has always been at war with us.
- pixl97 6mo agoYes and yes. It's unfortunate life isn't black and white, but that's the way it is.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- folkrav 6mo agoGuess why the US now has a "Department of War".
- aunty_helen 6mo agoHauntingly, they’re actually calling the ME “west asia” now. In my copy of animal farm, there’s actually a foreword relevant for this discussion. It goes into Orwells difficulty getting things published around ww2 as there was speech that whilst legal was frowned upon during wartime.
- righthand 6mo ago“It’s fine because it happened during WWII, the only thing we base history off of to determine limiting rights is fine. Dumber less informed people did it, so should we!”
- rolymath 6mo agoNot like I like the UAE (I don't), but during this war they made it plenty clear that it is illegal to record and share any videos or pictures of the damage that was caused by the Iranian attacks. Everyone in the country knows this, and I'm sure airlines have procedures to familiarize staff with the laws of the country they're flying to. If they don't, still not the UAE's problem. Don't like the law? Go somewhere else. (inb4 any arm chair analyst decides this law is a bad law. That's not the point. The police only apply the law and not write it) Secondly, I doubt this was some sort of high tech operation. More likely someone just snitched and/or some sort of meta data snooping.
- 152334H 6mo agoThe article's frame is concerning, but is it right to attribute the arrest to zero-click spyware? How is the process of the police's discovery known?
- WangComputers 6mo ago[flagged]
- guzfip 6mo agoThese foreign agitprop accounts have gotten so ridiculous lol.
- WangComputers 6mo ago[flagged]
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- nutjob2 6mo agoI guess you'll change your tune the first time they force you to submit to an inspection of your vagina.
- wat10000 6mo agoAnd people wonder why I refuse to connect through Dubai.
- t0mas88 6mo agoIndeed. And interestingly those people also believe this myth that Emirates is somehow always super luxurious. Emirates Economy is just as cattle class as all other large airlines, but with a worse safety record and having to go through Dubai. Just don't do it.
- aunty_helen 6mo agoEmirates has never had a passenger fatality. What do you mean worse safety?
- felixg3 6mo agoProbably referring to crew rest hours (esp. a problem in the late 2010s, near-misses at DXB etc. Not having had passenger fatalities is a bad indicator for safety records in the 21st century. The ek521 report is a good example documenting systemic failures at EK
- aunty_helen 6mo agoWell, if not ever having a fatality isn’t good enough, they’re consistently top 10 rated for safety. I just don’t buy ops criticism. It’s fine to not like Dubai, but emirates are provably one of the best airlines.
- fc417fc802 6mo ago> they’re consistently top 10 rated for safety By who? What's the criteria? You appear to be hand waving away the legitimate response you received.
- 6mo ago
- DarkmSparks 6mo agoThe irony is this arrest is most probably the first most people have heard of them getting flattened.
- chasil 6mo agoThey also lost an aluminum plant, of which there are no pictures. https://www.recyclingtoday.com/news/aluminum-association-comments-on-attacks-on-persian-gulf-industry-infrastructure/ https://www.recyclingtoday.com/news/aluminum-association-com...
- varispeed 6mo agoIf you think WhatsApp is encrypted, I have a handful of magic beans to sell you.
- esskay 6mo agoCare to back that up? We know they don't encrypt metadata - that's not a secret. Message content however is E2EE - thankfully these things get audited: https://blog.cloudflare.com/key-transparency/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/key-transparency/
- varispeed 6mo agoThis doesn't prove WhatsApp is encrypted at all. It proves that a directory of public keys is being logged and audited. That's it. The protocol existing or being referenced doesn't prove it's what the production client is doing. That requires verifying the client code and behaviour end-to-end, not just the key directory.
- esskay 6mo agoGot it, so you can't back it up at all. You just made something up with zero actual evidence and rolled with it.
- eukara 6mo agothere have been claims as part of a recent lawsuit, which also influences peoples thinking see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47738339 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47738339 https://xcancel.com/BowesChay/status/2042399259316588793 https://xcancel.com/BowesChay/status/2042399259316588793 (replies)
- kelnos 6mo agoThe onus is not on us to prove that it's not E2E encrypted, but on Meta/WhatsApp to prove that it is. The only way they can do that is by open-sourcing the client application, and providing a method for anyone to verify that the binary on their device was built from those sources, without modification. Anything else is just theater. Anyone who is worried that their communications could get them arrested or attacked cannot safely use something like WhatsApp. There is no way to trust that a third party's keys haven't been added to a conversation, or that the client isn't leaking message content through some other means.
- projektfu 6mo agoThere is no war in Ba Du Bai.
- xnx 6mo ago...in Dubai
- moralestapia 6mo agoWhat people do not know or understand about the Arabian Peninsula is that you have essentially zero rights. People think, "It cannot be that bad" because a lot of money is spent on good PR for the region, and also because they never find themselves in situations where they get to see how little their lives are worth in those places. You go to a hotel for a week or take a business trip, everyone smiles, the food is good, whatever. You are not going to trigger any of the bad stuff that way. Before you say, "Well, yeah, if you do something egregious...", nope. Something as innocuous as disagreeing with a superior at work could land you in jail. You are 100% at the whim of people who have more power than you over there.
- nutjob2 6mo ago> "Well, yeah, if you do something egregious...", nope. Leaving a bad review online for a local business can get you arrested and jailed.
- ciupicri 6mo agoAre you talking about Germany? https://support.google.com/maps/thread/395192907/is-it-normal-to-get-threatened-because-of-a-bad-review-in-germany?hl=en https://support.google.com/maps/thread/395192907/is-it-norma...
- nutjob2 6mo agoNo, because defamation is a civil matter, so you can't be arrested or end up in jail.
- flyinghamster 6mo agoI'm of two minds on this. In peacetime, I'd consider something like that to be unreasonable and harmful, not that I'd ever even consider setting foot anywhere on the Arabian Peninsula. But, if anyone has noticed, World War III is raging all around us, and when an enemy who wants to kill you is backing that up with explosive payloads, you really don't want to be handing them battle damage assessments.
- mohamedkoubaa 6mo agoIf you give away freedom for security you deserve neither
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- fc417fc802 6mo agoWe do that as a matter of course. It's entirely unavoidable; the cost of living in society and all that. The question is the exchange rate, which is what your botched quote there actually refers to.
- rasz 6mo agoIts called free BDA, straight up aiding the enemy by correcting his fire.
- MobiusHorizons 5mo agoThe article claims the photo was shared in a private group chat. I think the image only became public because of the arrest and subsequent media interest. BDA from social media posts is a very real risk, but that is not what happened here.
- rasz 5mo agoDo we really want to dwell on sharing stuff in private group chats? cough alcoholic idiot cough Yemen
- haerr 6mo ago[dead]
- nutjob2 6mo agoThese ME countries are authoritarian hellholes with a thin veneer of civility and modernity. Think I'm exaggerating? How about being randomly dragged off your flight to have your vagina inspected: https://www.arabnews.jp/en/middle-east/article_30004/ https://www.arabnews.jp/en/middle-east/article_30004/ Being thrown in jail arbitrarily without much recourse is such a common occurrence it's spawned its won business category: https://www.detainedindubai.org/ https://www.detainedindubai.org/ I personally would not step foot in any of these places. This article is not news, it's par for the course.
- shell0x 6mo agoVery racist comment. They’re not all the same and this article is about Dubai, not Qatar. The UAE is the most open country in the ME and even allows gay people which is not legal in Qatar
- arduanika 6mo ago> The UAE government owns majority holdings in telecom companies Etisalat and Du. This gives security services the power to observe all communications on their networks. > The Arab state has also used the Israeli-developed software Pegasus which allows agents to listen into private calls and read messages, even if they are shared on encrypted apps like WhatsApp,. This seems to be the key part from a tech standpoint. Notice that it doesn't come out and say whether Pegasus played a part in this particular arrest, or the telecoms, or both, but it seems to be implied. Also, I'm intrigued by the punctuation error at the end: "...like WhatsApp,." Did an earlier draft go on to list others? Does Pegasus help governments read messages from Telegram? Signal? It would be interesting to know more.
- Zak 6mo ago> Does Pegasus help governments read messages from Telegram? Signal? Yes. It attempts privilege escalation and exfiltrates whatever message contents it can from multiple apps. Signal has some potential resistance to that since messages are encrypted in transit and at rest. The easiest weak link would be displaying message content in notifications, which is optional in Signal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_(spyware) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_(spyware)
- arduanika 6mo agoInteresting, thanks. I guess I'll carry on feeling marginally superior for choosing Signal over the others as my default, while remaining bleak about the overall landscape.
- Zak 6mo agoPegasus tries to get root on your phone. If it succeeds, it could theoretically read message content or decryption keys right out of RAM and Signal doesn't have many options to defend itself. If it doesn't, it tries to get additional permissions by other means, including asking the user for them. If it gets permission to read notifications and Signal is set to show message content in notifications, then it can exfiltrate your Signal messages. Your messages might be safe otherwise.
- uxhacker 6mo agoCould the weak spot with WhatsApp be that images are saved to a persons device? Also the metadata is not encrypted.
- mohamedkoubaa 6mo agoAfter Whatsapp was bought by Facebook why would anyone assume it is still private?
- aunty_helen 6mo agoThe “nothing to hide” people need to be real quiet about now.
- gamerslexus 6mo agoThe "tech solution can't fix a human problem" people on the other hand...
- OutOfHere 6mo agoIf you have a private conversation to have that would risk you getting arrested, you shouldn't be using WhatsApp or Signal for it. Consider something more obscure, not connected to your phone number or name, and make messages disappear after 24h. Consider SimpleX, Briar, etc. Obviously don't leave any trail or photos on your device either. Moreover, the device shouldn't be reachable via WhatsApp, Signal, SMS, or even a phone number, as these are common vectors for attackers. Your mobile device should probably be using hardened GrapheneOS or something else with sufficient obscurity. Do not make the mistake of activating a SIM or installing any Google app on the device. As a legal disclaimer, do not break the law.
- bparsons 6mo agoThe censorship is to shield embarrassing info from GCC and American audiences. As others have pointed out, Iran has its own satellites, and allies with satellites that can conduct their own battlefield damage assessments.
- chinathrow 6mo agoMiddle ages, in 2026. Dubai hasn't changed.
- PearlRiver 6mo agoSeeing millionaires praise Dubai was really eye opening to me. Seems that we don't really value democracy and freedom of speech as much as we pretend. Give up the entire fucking Constitution for order, low taxes and non unionized servants.
- shell0x 6mo agoI’d pick low taxes first. I lived in Singapore, Hong Kong for years and Dubai for few months and it’s significantly safer and cleaner. Taxes are low, law is enforced. You don’t need freedom of speech if a place is well run. Look at Europe and America. Everyone has an opinion and nothing works properly
- jmyeet 6mo agoIf you go to another country, you should be aware of their laws. If you don't like their laws, don't go. Personally, I've never understood Dubai's "charms". Is is Earth's Mos Eisley [1]. The legal system is completely corrupt and The economy is reliant upon slave labor [2]. For example, in Thailand it's a crime to step on the local currency [3]. Why? Because it's technically disrespecting the King, whose face is on the notes. Or in Japan, it's strictly illegal to bring adderall into the country under any circumstances [4]. I guess my point is that I really struggle to find sympathy for people who go to another country and act surprised that it's different to their home country. The UAE's restrictions on spreading such images as hurting national security actually goes beyond that. Did you know that it's now illegal to criticize Israel in the UAE [5]? Speaking of which, the US really isn't that much different on that last point [6]. [1]: https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Mos_Eisley https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Mos_Eisley [2]: https://www.walkfree.org/global-slavery-index/country-studies/united-arab-emirates/ https://www.walkfree.org/global-slavery-index/country-studie... [3]: https://nyccriminallawyer.com/weird-things-to-get-arrested-for-in-thailand/ https://nyccriminallawyer.com/weird-things-to-get-arrested-f... [4]: https://miusa.org/resource/tip-sheets/japanfocus/ https://miusa.org/resource/tip-sheets/japanfocus/ [5]: https://dawnmena.org/how-the-uae-is-suppressing-criticism-of-its-normalization-with-israel/ https://dawnmena.org/how-the-uae-is-suppressing-criticism-of... [6]: https://www.aclu-nj.org/press-releases/secretary-state-letter-immigration-court-confirms-mahmoud-khalil-solely-targeted/ https://www.aclu-nj.org/press-releases/secretary-state-lette...
- shell0x 6mo agoThe biggest risk for tourists visiting the USA is the high crime rate and the fact that crazy people are allowed to carry guns. This is an actual risk to my safety and part of the reason why I don’t even want to visit America again. From a German perspective, the USA is the country with the craziest laws and UAE, Singapore, Thailand and Japan all sound better to me.
- mikewarot 6mo agoIn modern conflicts, sharing photos or videos of the results of enemy attacks greatly aids in their battle damage assessments. It's informative to look at history, and see how censorship as effective, as it was here in the US during WWII.[1] The Japanese were floating bombs into the US, which were effectively unguided intercontinental weapons. The censorship campaign kept all knowledge of the effects from reaching back to Japan, which factored in their decision to abandon the effort as resources ran short toward the end of the war. So, yes... publishing information can indeed be directly harmful to state interests. I'm generally opposed to censorship, and it shouldn't be allowed unless there's been an ACTUAL declaration of war. Far too often, censorship is used to cover up war crimes, and other abuses of public trust.[2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fu-Go_balloon_bomb#Censorship_campaign https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fu-Go_balloon_bomb#Censorship_... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crimes_in_the_Gaza_war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crimes_in_the_Gaza_war
- anigbrowl 6mo agoYour point is good but the example is not great. The damage from those Japanese bombs was minimal; one of them killed a few people in Oregon. Even if the Japanese had had reports on every incident they would likely have decided it was not worth it.
- vrosas 6mo agoIf the damage was large, it would be hard to cover up. And if it was very large the US would seek to minimize it. “A few people killed” might be interpreted as “probably a ton of people killed” by the enemy and they keep doing it. Zero information means you can’t argue the case one way or the other, and in those cases the project gets scrapped.
- cynicalsecurity 6mo agoSomeone still trusts Whatsapp with their data?