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Open Whisper Systems partners with WhatsApp to provide end-to-end encryption

506 points by charlieok 12y ago

otoburb 12y ago
The submitted link (https://whispersystems.org/blog/whatsapp/ https://whispersystems.org/blog/whatsapp/) is 404. Also, at this time, the Whisper Systems blog doesn't actually show a blog entry referencing WhatsApp.
- charlieok 12y ago
  huh, it worked for me just a minute ago. Wonder if they just took it down? (edit: looks like it's back up now) Here's the text of the page I got: At Open Whisper Systems, our goal is to make private communication simple. For the past three years, we’ve been developing a modern, open source, strong encryption protocol [1] for asynchronous messaging systems, designed to make seamless end-to-end encrypted messaging possible. Today we’re excited to publicly announce a partnership with WhatsApp, the most popular messaging app in the world, to incorporate the TextSecure protocol into their clients and provide end-to-end encryption for their users by default. Your messages may already be encrypted The most recent WhatsApp Android client release includes support for the TextSecure encryption protocol, and billions of encrypted messages are being exchanged daily. The WhatsApp Android client does not yet support encrypted messaging for group chat or media messages, but we’ll be rolling out support for those next, in addition to support for more client platforms. We’ll also be surfacing options for key verification in clients as the protocol integrations are completed. WhatsApp runs on an incredible number of mobile platforms, so full deployment will be an incremental process as we add TextSecure protocol support into each WhatsApp client platform. We have a ways to go until all mobile platforms are fully supported, but we are moving quickly towards a world where all WhatsApp users will get end-to-end encryption by default. This is still the beginning We’re continuing to develop the TextSecure app [2], and our roadmap for our own products remains unchanged. We’ve been working with WhatsApp for the past half year, and have learned a lot through the process of deploying the TextSecure protocol at the scale of hundreds of millions of users. We’re excited to incorporate what we’ve learned from this integration into our future design decisions, and to bring this experience to bear on integrations that we do with other companies and products in the future. We believe that by continuing to advance the state of the art for frictionless private communication with open source software, open protocols, and simple libraries, we’ll have additional opportunities to support mass adoption of end-to-end encryption. WhatsApp deserves enormous praise for devoting considerable time and effort to this project. Even though we’re still at the beginning of the rollout, we believe this already represents the largest deployment of end-to-end encrypted communication in history. Brian Acton and the WhatsApp engineering team has been amazing to work with. Their devotion to the project as well as their thoroughness in getting this done are inspiring in a world where so many other companies are focused on surveillance instead of privacy. Get involved! If you’d like to participate in Open Whisper Systems, there are still a few more days to apply to Winter Of Code [3], our retreat in Hawaii this January. Or check out our Android [4], iOS [5], and browser [6] clients on GitHub to join in on development. If you’d like to donate to Open Whisper Systems, we accept Bitcoin donations [7] that are automatically paid out to each merged PR via BitHub [8]. You can also make tax-deductible donations by credit card through the Freedom Of The Press Foundation here [9]. Links: [1] https://whispersystems.org/blog/advanced-ratcheting/ [2] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.thoughtcrime.securesms [3] https://whispersystems.org/blog/winter-of-code/ [4] https://github.com/whispersystems/textsecure [5] https://github.com/whispersystems/signal-ios [6] https://github.com/WhisperSystems/TextSecure-Browser/ [7] http://bithub.whispersystems.org/ [8] https://whispersystems.org/blog/bithub/ [9] https://freedom.press/bundle/encryption-tools-journalists
- rx4g 12y ago
  Huh, http://www.theverge.com/2014/11/18/7239221/whatsapp-rolls-out-end-to-end-encryption-with-textsecure http://www.theverge.com/2014/11/18/7239221/whatsapp-rolls-ou... (found searching Google News for TextSecure) is also 404'ing at the moment.
- therealmarv 12y ago
  It is now again online. Very strange.
- hellbanner 12y ago
  Did it pop on with a warrant canary and reappear without one?
therealmarv 12y ago
Also the article from The Verge went offline http://www.theverge.com/2014/11/18/7239221/whatsapp-rolls-out-end-to-end-encryption-with-textsecure http://www.theverge.com/2014/11/18/7239221/whatsapp-rolls-ou...
lgierth 12y ago
Incidentally, the WhatsApp cofounder donated $1M to the FreeBSD foundation today. The other link posted, theverge.com, is 404 as well, btw.
morsch 12y ago
The Verge had an article about this, whatever "this" is: http://www.theverge.com/2014/11/18/7239221/whatsapp-rolls-out-end-to-end-encryption-with-textsecure http://www.theverge.com/2014/11/18/7239221/whatsapp-rolls-ou... But that's also 404 now, here's a cached copy: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:NAz9uOinm9QJ:www.theverge.com/2014/11/18/7239221/whatsapp-rolls-out-end-to-end-encryption-with-textsecure http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:NAz9uOi... And here's a copy of the article text: http://pastebin.com/Y5CUPqDJ http://pastebin.com/Y5CUPqDJ They talked to Moxie about it, so it doesn't look like a hoax. More like it wasn't supposed be announced yet. It goes without saying that this would be a big deal. And it would explain a lot of the slow movement w.r.t. an iOS client. Although The Verge wasn't sure if and when the encryption would be available on iOS. And WhatsApp is closed source software, something that's unlikely to change, which really isn't what we want from a secure messenger. So I might keep Text Secure installed for the time being. But still. OTR (and the enhanced/modified version of it TextSecure is using) is probably the easiest to use way to communicate in a reasonably secure fashion, and it'd would be fantastic to see it used by hundreds of millions of users all of a sudden -- even if it's sitting on top of insecure mobile operating systems and untrusted-yet-privileged hardware.
- higherpurpose 12y ago
  New working link: http://www.theverge.com/2014/11/18/7241011/whatsapp-rolls-out-end-to-end-encryption-using-textsecure-code http://www.theverge.com/2014/11/18/7241011/whatsapp-rolls-ou...
- barnaby 12y ago
  >> But still. OTR (and the enhanced/modified version of it TextSecure is using) is probably the easiest to use way to communicate in a reasonably secure fashion, and it'd would be fantastic to see it used by hundreds of millions of users all of a sudden -- even if it's sitting on top of insecure mobile operating systems and untrusted-yet-privileged hardware. Have you had issues getting OTR to connect sometimes? Myself and about 5 friends have been using OTR with ChatSecure on the phone and pidgin on the desktop. Sometimes the OTR connection just doesn't engage, and we suspect it's because there are multiple instances of the chat client signed in and it like "crosses the streams" or something. CryptoCat has similar issues. Is there a perscribed way of using OTR that won't give us these problems? TextSecure hasn't given us any problems yet ... though, we never see the encrypted text messages in our SMS, even when we use textsecure over google voice. Does TextSecure just bypass actual SMS channels?
derwiki 12y ago
I recently tried WhatsApp alternatives that provided end-to-end encryption on Android (I use TextSecure, but only 1% of my contacts do). Wickr was the best, but a little too paranoid for daily use. WhatsApp has a better UI and sends messages faster. I would love to trust that their end-to-end encryption is legit, and WhisperSystems being involved helps, but.. seems I'm still skeptical.
- nicpottier 12y ago
  What about Telegram? I've been fairly pleased with it and its interface is a shameless rip off of WhatsApp. (which isn't a bad thing mind you)
  - happyhappy 12y ago
    Telegram should be considered insecure. See this post for a nice summary: http://security.stackexchange.com/a/49802 http://security.stackexchange.com/a/49802
    - nicpottier 12y ago
      That seems more like an ad-hominem than anything. Their secret chats specifically seem like they would be entirely secure.
      - tptacek 12y ago
        It would be interesting if you could find a reputable cryptographer to agree with either of those sentences.
      - edraferi 12y ago
        Steve Gibson did a pretty detailed analysis of Telegram on Security Now #444, recorded 25 Feb 2014. He concluded that Telegram's security was inadequate and recommended Threema as an alternative. http://twit.tv/show/security-now/444 http://twit.tv/show/security-now/444 https://threema.ch/en https://threema.ch/en
deleted 12y ago
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eyeareque 12y ago
I trust Moxie more than governments or companies, so this really makes me happy. If you've read things on his website (http://www.thoughtcrime.org http://www.thoughtcrime.org) you'll know how important remaining secure from the government is to him. This is a huge step in the right direction. I'd also like to congratulate WhatsApp on their decision, I have a lot more respect for them now. Congrats Moxie and team. You guys are doing a great thing for humanity.
- rsync 12y ago
  All of that work is irrelevant unless we have an open baseband and an open SIM card. Without that, your carrier owns you at a bit by bit level in the memory of "your" computer.
  - eyeareque 12y ago
    It is a good step in the right direction. I agree though, we need to fix those issues as well.
  - tptacek 12y ago
    All of that work is not irrelevant.
    - rsync 12y ago
      Ok. I do go a bit overboard sometimes with the rants about closed baseband firmware. But it needs to be stressed that these kind of things are not the magic fix for mobile phone comms that people think they are. A lot of use cases in our current world involve state owned telecom entities and Joe-Arab-Spring-Six-Pack should not be confused into thinking this solves that problem.
      - mike_hearn 12y ago
        I pointed this out in a comment a few days ago, but the era in handset design when basebands were unilaterally trusted is over. I believe modern Qualcomm basebands are firewalled off from the rest of the device using MMUs, they do not have the ability to do DMA and their firmware is significantly hardened using techniques like ASLR, stack canaries and even using a proprietary VLIW instruction set that is barely documented. Handset makers and carriers all have strong financial incentives to harden the basebands against hacks because they don't want people unlocking their phones, which was often being done by exploiting bugs in basebands. Also, they need the airwaves to have integrity and mobile protocols are all based on the assumption of trusted endpoints that don't violate the rules. Now that DIY GSM base stations have become a reality, carriers face a nightmare scenario of someone running a buggy or malicoius "tower" that infects basebands of any phones that enters into range and starts them doing some kind of horrible attack against the carrier infrastructure. E.g. you can imagine an extortion attempt that works this way. It's in their best interests for their devices to behave predictably and be controlled only be themselves.
higherpurpose 12y ago
Not only is this huge by itself (600 million users with E2E encrypted messages by default), but I'm hoping this will put a big pressure on Google, Microsoft and others to adopt TextSecure's protocol (or something very similar), too. This is how you deliver strong security to the masses. Not by convincing all your friends to adopt some weird and obscure chat app with the only benefit that it's "more secure" (most won't care), but by getting large service providers to adopt it and push it to hundreds of million of users without them even noticing. Oh, and I assume that if Whatsapp adopted it, Facebook Chat isn't too far behind...right?
- rsync 12y ago
  "This is how you deliver strong security to the masses." You cannot deliver strong security on a mobile phone platform. The carrier owns you. In fact, the carrier owns you doubly over because it can control "your" computer via two pathways - with the baseband and the SIM card - both of which you have no control over. You cannot be secure on a device that a third party can interact with at the level of DMA. Further, while I keep adding a caveat about some phones whose SOC involves a baseband that is more akin to a USB modem, in terms of architecture, it turns out that even these "less terrible" SOC designs still have kind-of-sort-of ways to attain full control by the baseband over the AP. It really is that bad. You gain no protection from the carrier or a state actor that can influence the carrier, and certainly no protection from a rogue cellsite that can instruct your baseband (or your SIM) to manipulate main memory arbitrarily.
- alexjarvis 12y ago
  Highly unlikely seeing as Facebook uses the content of your messages to market ads to you, build up a profile of you, identify you and identify trends (links, keywords). The fact that Facebook owns WhatsApp makes this announcement a big surprise as I think they profit far more with unencrypted messages (although WhatsApp was just delivering, not storing them supposedly).
  - mike_hearn 12y ago
    I have never seen an ad on Facebook that was obviously targeted based on my chats, in fact, targeting ads based on my chats would be a pointless, money-losing approach for them as I never talk about commercially relevant things with my friends. The ads I see on Facebook currently are for SSL certificates (guess what I bought recently), BGP routing optimisation products (not sure why), and TransferWise (I used them once). In short, lots of remarketing and something presumably targeted at one of the news sources I get in my feed e.g. slashdot. These are all pretty nerdy yet also pretty reasonable ads. Ads targeted based on my chats would mostly revolve around .... well, not sure. At best, nights out or local cinemas. I doubt there's much profit in that.
justfane 12y ago
But wait... Didn't Facebook Inc; Buy whats app for 19 billion? So does this mean Whisper Systems is working with 'facebook' on this...? Maybe i'm wrong...
- frabcus 12y ago
  Yep. And Facebook have done other privacy-aware things recently - such as setting up a Tor hidden node: http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/10/facebook-offers-hidden-service-to-tor-users/ http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/10/facebook-offers-hidd...
  - doublerebel 12y ago
    Whoops, apologies. Accidental mobile downvote. Appreciate the link and knowledge.
  - justfane 12y ago
    TOR can be compromised easily however... Edit) So they say...
dmix 12y ago
Since this doesn't seem to be ready to be fully announced yet, I checked last week and Open WhisperSystems is still looking for iOS developers to help. Moxie mentioned on twitter that security and crypto experience is not required, but they are looking for f/t devs not just p/t help. Also they have a browser extension that could use some help from front-end devs: https://github.com/WhisperSystems/TextSecure-Browser https://github.com/WhisperSystems/TextSecure-Browser It is still pretty early but the project has Bithub as well. From my understanding, this is their planned desktop version.
13 12y ago
Why do all of these services insist on you giving them your mobile number? Even Telegram, which claims to be the all giving god of encryption and privacy, insists on having it no matter what. It's a massive barrier to entry which I'm not willing to cross, and I'm sure other people aren't either.
- BuildTheRobots 12y ago
  Whatsapp requires a telephone number as it uses that for your ID. Same with RedPhone. TextSecure (android) can certainly be used without registering -you just miss out on the push-via-data service.
  - 13 12y ago
    > Whatsapp requires a telephone number as it uses that for your ID. I understand that. I'm questioning why they've set such an arbitrary restriction in the first place.
    - mike_hearn 12y ago
      It's not arbitrary. It simplifies things for users a lot. No usernames or passwords to remember. Many telcos link your phone number to your identity which you cannot really lose, so therefore also no chance of losing your WhatsApp account. Also, more importantly, solves the contact discovery/social network problem by letting you reuse the phones address book.
      - 13 12y ago
        You'll find that many people are very reluctant to give up that sort of information about themselves though, whether it be for privacy or because they don't like being incessantly spammed. I understand it existing as an option, maybe even a default, but to make it to the only method of authentication seems insane. Sure, many users will deem that the benefit of using the application overwhelms any negative implications, but it would be nicer if they weren't forced to make that tradeoff in the first place. I'm not against the option existing, I'm against it being the only option.
orblivion 12y ago
I don't suppose they will open source the WhatsApp client as part of this. Assuming so, that sounds like a compromise for Open Whisper Systems.
deleted 12y ago
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patcon 12y ago
This is so unbelievably awesome.
secfirstmd 12y ago
Amazing news!
unicornporn 12y ago
So, does this mean that users of the Android TextSecure app (and perhaps even Signal for iOS) will be able to communicate with WhatsApp users?
- nobodyshere 12y ago
  Unlikely. Yet they will share the same level of secrecy and encryption for their communications now.
  - avn2109 12y ago
    >> "...same level of secrecy..." Well, no. As pointed out elsewhere in this thread, if Whisper Systems doesn't own the whole app, then the Whatsapp code might include code (that they "forget" to show Moxie) that phones home to the Zuckerberg mansion/windowless black buildings in Virgina.
MatthiasP 12y ago
If this is true and has no strings (backdoors) attached this is huge. This means end-to-end encryption for messages from more than half a billion people and an incredible privacy win compared to SMS usage. Brought to you by facebook.
- AlyssaRowan 12y ago
  I do not think there are likely to be backdoors: Moxie just wouldn't allow it without walking away and saying something loudly. He is not on the NSA's Christmas list. :)
  - edwintorok 12y ago
    If the application isn't open-source how can he check though? They can show a version without the backdoor to him and build the binary with the backdoor. Or there could be vulnerabilities elsewhere (not in Moxie's) code. I don't think you can claim no backdoors unless you have the full application under your control, and have it audited.
  - nly 12y ago
    Trusting one person simply because they're cool, with the privacy of 600M users, is pretty foolish. Even if everything you say is true, and Moxie signs off on the implementation, nothing prevents men in black suits turning up the day he leaves and suggesting they introduce a subtle bug.
    - balladeer 12y ago
      Agreed. This fanboy kinda trust and reliance can be very damaging.
- zanny 12y ago
  Meanwhile, XMPP OTR and SRTP on SIP have been around for a decade. Too bad half a billion people are using a proprietary non-ineroperable chat mechanism with no idea what WhatsApp is logging and with no assurance of the continued availability of the service. WhatsApp, Hangouts, Skype, etc are all cancer on interpersonal communications by trying to make it a profit center. They destroy user freedom, they severely limit communication, and they do it while making you think its worth your money when you could host your own XMPP server and delegate with an entire network of chat servers. And no, I do not mean your grandmother should host an XMPP server. Facebook gets props for using XMPP in its messaging implementation, even if they crippled it by not letting users message outside Facebooks network.
g8oz 12y ago
Great news, WhatsApp needs all the help it can get on security matters. https://www.eff.org/secure-messaging-scorecard https://www.eff.org/secure-messaging-scorecard
gonetone 12y ago
can't find any official statement from WhatsApp anywhere. Most of the sources just cite Marlinspike.
- andor 12y ago
  Yes, it sounds too good to be true. Like the Yes Men's "New York Times Special Edition".
gonetone 12y ago
can't find any official statement from WhatsApp anywhere. Most of the sources just cite Marlinspike.
furyg3 12y ago
"[...] and our roadmap for our own products remains unchanged." What is that roadmap? TextSecure for iOS is stalled... Awesome for Moxie and team, his is huge news. But the world still needs a cross platform, open source, end-to-end encrypted platform... It's just too important to trust Facebook with.
- TillE 12y ago
  Text messaging for Signal is not "stalled", just still in development. https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-iOS/commits/textSecure https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-iOS/commits/textSec...
  - justcommenting 12y ago
    it might be fair to say that it's taken longer to release than the devs anticipated or hoped. but the good news is that anyone here can contribute to the code and help to change that!
estefan 12y ago
...and once this is rolled out, they'll add auto-deleting messages, et voila! Snapchat destroyed over night!
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- tptacek 12y ago
  That is not why Moxie was "hatin' on" Telegram.
  - deleted 12y ago
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    - tptacek 12y ago
      You're going to be pretty unhappy (or pretty uninformed) if every time a subject matter expert in security starts a project, you have to discount everything they say about everything in the space their project is in. Yes, I'm going to go ahead and say "zero conflict of interest". Also: he's simply correct. If you'd like to rebut what he said about Telegram, actually rebut it.
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        SamReidHughes 12y ago
        Sorry for the misclicked downvote (to the post I'm replying to). It is very plausible (from my rando perspective) thatq moxie's reaction was greater than it would have been for some other badly done security. But it's also plausible that it's just frustrating to be working on something and then seeing a well-funded attempt to obliterate any good that you might be doing. Which is what Telegram was. Is it a "conflict of interest", if your interests are for secure messaging to become widely used, to attack those which are, thanks to their ineptitude and funding, a plausible threat to your goal? Taking the words "conflict of interest" literally, yes, but it's not an ulterior interest the way the phrase is usually applied. Telegram was also doing a really good job of pushing buttons, going off about how they had Math PhD's. Edit: Hold on, you're saying there was a conflict of interest, in the past, because he's working with WhatsApp now? Do you have any personal knowledge of the timeline here?
thewarrior 12y ago
This is going to backfire big time on WhatsApp and get them banned from many countries like India , Saudi Arabia etc.
robmccoll 12y ago
So how does the initial key exchange work here?
- andyjohnson0 12y ago
  TextSecure uses the OTR protocol [1,2], which itself uses Diffie-Hellman key exchange [3] to allow the communicating devices to agree on a shared key without the key being transmitted over the channel [4]. OTR actually uses "ephemeral" Diffie-Hellman [5], where a new shared key is generated for each session. This provides forward security by guaranteeing that a key compromise in the future won't render past messages decryptable. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TextSecure http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TextSecure [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-the-Record_Messaging http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-the-Record_Messaging [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffie%E2%80%93Hellman_key_exchange http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffie%E2%80%93Hellman_key_exch... [4] http://security.stackexchange.com/a/45971 http://security.stackexchange.com/a/45971 [5] https://whispersystems.org/blog/advanced-ratcheting/ https://whispersystems.org/blog/advanced-ratcheting/
  - rakoo 12y ago
    TextSecure doesn't use OTR, it uses a construction based on the Axolotl ratchet as described here: https://github.com/trevp/axolotl/wiki https://github.com/trevp/axolotl/wiki It's much much better than OTR in that: - Asynchronicity is on by default (you don't need both parties to be up and running at the same time to start a convo) - You don't need to wait for your recipient to answer before you can write something (ie you can send multiple messages one after another, directly) - Because you can do both of the above, you can easily do multiparty, something OTR struggles with. For more details: https://whispersystems.org/blog/asynchronous-security/ https://whispersystems.org/blog/asynchronous-security/ https://whispersystems.org/blog/private-groups/ https://whispersystems.org/blog/private-groups/
    - andyjohnson0 12y ago
      You're right and I was wrong. The TextSecure protocol was originally based on OTR, but I hadn't appreciated the degree of divergence from it required by their introduction of asynchronous ephemeral key negotiation. So, thanks! I learned about some cool stuff.
Tepix 12y ago
This is a huge improvement and I'm very glad that WhatsApp is going this route. However, from my point of view, TextSecure isn't there yet. The ideal solution should be decentralized, like XMPP. That makes gathering meta data so much harder.
Spearchucker 12y ago
I need convincing. Facebook can't monetize end-to-end encryption, and WhatsApp doesn't ask before uploading my contacts. Encryption from the client to the server is a start, but there's not enough here to make me use it.
- SideburnsOfDoom 12y ago
  > I need convincing. Facebook can't monetize end-to-end encryption, Completely right. Facebook paid $19Bn for whatsapp. How is not being able to keyword-search messages going to help them cover some of that cost? It sounds great but doesn't add up.
  - dserodio 12y ago
    In this case, the metadata (who is talking to who, and when) may be more valuable than the messages' contents.
nodata 12y ago
First a million bucks to FreeBSD, now this? Keep it coming WhatsApp!

506 points by charlieok 12y ago

The submitted link (https://whispersystems.org/blog/whatsapp/ https://whispersystems.org/blog/whatsapp/) is 404. Also, at this time, the Whisper Systems blog doesn't actually show a blog entry referencing WhatsApp.

charlieok 12y ago
huh, it worked for me just a minute ago. Wonder if they just took it down? (edit: looks like it's back up now) Here's the text of the page I got: At Open Whisper Systems, our goal is to make private communication simple. For the past three years, we’ve been developing a modern, open source, strong encryption protocol [1] for asynchronous messaging systems, designed to make seamless end-to-end encrypted messaging possible. Today we’re excited to publicly announce a partnership with WhatsApp, the most popular messaging app in the world, to incorporate the TextSecure protocol into their clients and provide end-to-end encryption for their users by default. Your messages may already be encrypted The most recent WhatsApp Android client release includes support for the TextSecure encryption protocol, and billions of encrypted messages are being exchanged daily. The WhatsApp Android client does not yet support encrypted messaging for group chat or media messages, but we’ll be rolling out support for those next, in addition to support for more client platforms. We’ll also be surfacing options for key verification in clients as the protocol integrations are completed. WhatsApp runs on an incredible number of mobile platforms, so full deployment will be an incremental process as we add TextSecure protocol support into each WhatsApp client platform. We have a ways to go until all mobile platforms are fully supported, but we are moving quickly towards a world where all WhatsApp users will get end-to-end encryption by default. This is still the beginning We’re continuing to develop the TextSecure app [2], and our roadmap for our own products remains unchanged. We’ve been working with WhatsApp for the past half year, and have learned a lot through the process of deploying the TextSecure protocol at the scale of hundreds of millions of users. We’re excited to incorporate what we’ve learned from this integration into our future design decisions, and to bring this experience to bear on integrations that we do with other companies and products in the future. We believe that by continuing to advance the state of the art for frictionless private communication with open source software, open protocols, and simple libraries, we’ll have additional opportunities to support mass adoption of end-to-end encryption. WhatsApp deserves enormous praise for devoting considerable time and effort to this project. Even though we’re still at the beginning of the rollout, we believe this already represents the largest deployment of end-to-end encrypted communication in history. Brian Acton and the WhatsApp engineering team has been amazing to work with. Their devotion to the project as well as their thoroughness in getting this done are inspiring in a world where so many other companies are focused on surveillance instead of privacy. Get involved! If you’d like to participate in Open Whisper Systems, there are still a few more days to apply to Winter Of Code [3], our retreat in Hawaii this January. Or check out our Android [4], iOS [5], and browser [6] clients on GitHub to join in on development. If you’d like to donate to Open Whisper Systems, we accept Bitcoin donations [7] that are automatically paid out to each merged PR via BitHub [8]. You can also make tax-deductible donations by credit card through the Freedom Of The Press Foundation here [9]. Links: [1] https://whispersystems.org/blog/advanced-ratcheting/ [2] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.thoughtcrime.securesms [3] https://whispersystems.org/blog/winter-of-code/ [4] https://github.com/whispersystems/textsecure [5] https://github.com/whispersystems/signal-ios [6] https://github.com/WhisperSystems/TextSecure-Browser/ [7] http://bithub.whispersystems.org/ [8] https://whispersystems.org/blog/bithub/ [9] https://freedom.press/bundle/encryption-tools-journalists
rx4g 12y ago
Huh, http://www.theverge.com/2014/11/18/7239221/whatsapp-rolls-out-end-to-end-encryption-with-textsecure http://www.theverge.com/2014/11/18/7239221/whatsapp-rolls-ou... (found searching Google News for TextSecure) is also 404'ing at the moment.
therealmarv 12y ago
It is now again online. Very strange.
hellbanner 12y ago
Did it pop on with a warrant canary and reappear without one?

therealmarv 12y ago

Also the article from The Verge went offline http://www.theverge.com/2014/11/18/7239221/whatsapp-rolls-out-end-to-end-encryption-with-textsecure http://www.theverge.com/2014/11/18/7239221/whatsapp-rolls-ou...

lgierth 12y ago

Incidentally, the WhatsApp cofounder donated $1M to the FreeBSD foundation today. The other link posted, theverge.com, is 404 as well, btw.

morsch 12y ago

The Verge had an article about this, whatever "this" is: http://www.theverge.com/2014/11/18/7239221/whatsapp-rolls-out-end-to-end-encryption-with-textsecure http://www.theverge.com/2014/11/18/7239221/whatsapp-rolls-ou... But that's also 404 now, here's a cached copy: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:NAz9uOinm9QJ:www.theverge.com/2014/11/18/7239221/whatsapp-rolls-out-end-to-end-encryption-with-textsecure http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:NAz9uOi... And here's a copy of the article text: http://pastebin.com/Y5CUPqDJ http://pastebin.com/Y5CUPqDJ They talked to Moxie about it, so it doesn't look like a hoax. More like it wasn't supposed be announced yet. It goes without saying that this would be a big deal. And it would explain a lot of the slow movement w.r.t. an iOS client. Although The Verge wasn't sure if and when the encryption would be available on iOS. And WhatsApp is closed source software, something that's unlikely to change, which really isn't what we want from a secure messenger. So I might keep Text Secure installed for the time being. But still. OTR (and the enhanced/modified version of it TextSecure is using) is probably the easiest to use way to communicate in a reasonably secure fashion, and it'd would be fantastic to see it used by hundreds of millions of users all of a sudden -- even if it's sitting on top of insecure mobile operating systems and untrusted-yet-privileged hardware.

higherpurpose 12y ago
New working link: http://www.theverge.com/2014/11/18/7241011/whatsapp-rolls-out-end-to-end-encryption-using-textsecure-code http://www.theverge.com/2014/11/18/7241011/whatsapp-rolls-ou...
barnaby 12y ago
>> But still. OTR (and the enhanced/modified version of it TextSecure is using) is probably the easiest to use way to communicate in a reasonably secure fashion, and it'd would be fantastic to see it used by hundreds of millions of users all of a sudden -- even if it's sitting on top of insecure mobile operating systems and untrusted-yet-privileged hardware. Have you had issues getting OTR to connect sometimes? Myself and about 5 friends have been using OTR with ChatSecure on the phone and pidgin on the desktop. Sometimes the OTR connection just doesn't engage, and we suspect it's because there are multiple instances of the chat client signed in and it like "crosses the streams" or something. CryptoCat has similar issues. Is there a perscribed way of using OTR that won't give us these problems? TextSecure hasn't given us any problems yet ... though, we never see the encrypted text messages in our SMS, even when we use textsecure over google voice. Does TextSecure just bypass actual SMS channels?

derwiki 12y ago

I recently tried WhatsApp alternatives that provided end-to-end encryption on Android (I use TextSecure, but only 1% of my contacts do). Wickr was the best, but a little too paranoid for daily use. WhatsApp has a better UI and sends messages faster. I would love to trust that their end-to-end encryption is legit, and WhisperSystems being involved helps, but.. seems I'm still skeptical.

nicpottier 12y ago
What about Telegram? I've been fairly pleased with it and its interface is a shameless rip off of WhatsApp. (which isn't a bad thing mind you)
- happyhappy 12y ago
  Telegram should be considered insecure. See this post for a nice summary: http://security.stackexchange.com/a/49802 http://security.stackexchange.com/a/49802
  - nicpottier 12y ago
    That seems more like an ad-hominem than anything. Their secret chats specifically seem like they would be entirely secure.
    - tptacek 12y ago
      It would be interesting if you could find a reputable cryptographer to agree with either of those sentences.
    - edraferi 12y ago
      Steve Gibson did a pretty detailed analysis of Telegram on Security Now #444, recorded 25 Feb 2014. He concluded that Telegram's security was inadequate and recommended Threema as an alternative. http://twit.tv/show/security-now/444 http://twit.tv/show/security-now/444 https://threema.ch/en https://threema.ch/en

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eyeareque 12y ago

I trust Moxie more than governments or companies, so this really makes me happy. If you've read things on his website (http://www.thoughtcrime.org http://www.thoughtcrime.org) you'll know how important remaining secure from the government is to him. This is a huge step in the right direction. I'd also like to congratulate WhatsApp on their decision, I have a lot more respect for them now. Congrats Moxie and team. You guys are doing a great thing for humanity.

rsync 12y ago
All of that work is irrelevant unless we have an open baseband and an open SIM card. Without that, your carrier owns you at a bit by bit level in the memory of "your" computer.
- eyeareque 12y ago
  It is a good step in the right direction. I agree though, we need to fix those issues as well.
- tptacek 12y ago
  All of that work is not irrelevant.
  - rsync 12y ago
    Ok. I do go a bit overboard sometimes with the rants about closed baseband firmware. But it needs to be stressed that these kind of things are not the magic fix for mobile phone comms that people think they are. A lot of use cases in our current world involve state owned telecom entities and Joe-Arab-Spring-Six-Pack should not be confused into thinking this solves that problem.
    - mike_hearn 12y ago
      I pointed this out in a comment a few days ago, but the era in handset design when basebands were unilaterally trusted is over. I believe modern Qualcomm basebands are firewalled off from the rest of the device using MMUs, they do not have the ability to do DMA and their firmware is significantly hardened using techniques like ASLR, stack canaries and even using a proprietary VLIW instruction set that is barely documented. Handset makers and carriers all have strong financial incentives to harden the basebands against hacks because they don't want people unlocking their phones, which was often being done by exploiting bugs in basebands. Also, they need the airwaves to have integrity and mobile protocols are all based on the assumption of trusted endpoints that don't violate the rules. Now that DIY GSM base stations have become a reality, carriers face a nightmare scenario of someone running a buggy or malicoius "tower" that infects basebands of any phones that enters into range and starts them doing some kind of horrible attack against the carrier infrastructure. E.g. you can imagine an extortion attempt that works this way. It's in their best interests for their devices to behave predictably and be controlled only be themselves.

higherpurpose 12y ago

Not only is this huge by itself (600 million users with E2E encrypted messages by default), but I'm hoping this will put a big pressure on Google, Microsoft and others to adopt TextSecure's protocol (or something very similar), too. This is how you deliver strong security to the masses. Not by convincing all your friends to adopt some weird and obscure chat app with the only benefit that it's "more secure" (most won't care), but by getting large service providers to adopt it and push it to hundreds of million of users without them even noticing. Oh, and I assume that if Whatsapp adopted it, Facebook Chat isn't too far behind...right?

rsync 12y ago
"This is how you deliver strong security to the masses." You cannot deliver strong security on a mobile phone platform. The carrier owns you. In fact, the carrier owns you doubly over because it can control "your" computer via two pathways - with the baseband and the SIM card - both of which you have no control over. You cannot be secure on a device that a third party can interact with at the level of DMA. Further, while I keep adding a caveat about some phones whose SOC involves a baseband that is more akin to a USB modem, in terms of architecture, it turns out that even these "less terrible" SOC designs still have kind-of-sort-of ways to attain full control by the baseband over the AP. It really is that bad. You gain no protection from the carrier or a state actor that can influence the carrier, and certainly no protection from a rogue cellsite that can instruct your baseband (or your SIM) to manipulate main memory arbitrarily.
alexjarvis 12y ago
Highly unlikely seeing as Facebook uses the content of your messages to market ads to you, build up a profile of you, identify you and identify trends (links, keywords). The fact that Facebook owns WhatsApp makes this announcement a big surprise as I think they profit far more with unencrypted messages (although WhatsApp was just delivering, not storing them supposedly).
- mike_hearn 12y ago
  I have never seen an ad on Facebook that was obviously targeted based on my chats, in fact, targeting ads based on my chats would be a pointless, money-losing approach for them as I never talk about commercially relevant things with my friends. The ads I see on Facebook currently are for SSL certificates (guess what I bought recently), BGP routing optimisation products (not sure why), and TransferWise (I used them once). In short, lots of remarketing and something presumably targeted at one of the news sources I get in my feed e.g. slashdot. These are all pretty nerdy yet also pretty reasonable ads. Ads targeted based on my chats would mostly revolve around .... well, not sure. At best, nights out or local cinemas. I doubt there's much profit in that.

justfane 12y ago

But wait... Didn't Facebook Inc; Buy whats app for 19 billion? So does this mean Whisper Systems is working with 'facebook' on this...? Maybe i'm wrong...

frabcus 12y ago
Yep. And Facebook have done other privacy-aware things recently - such as setting up a Tor hidden node: http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/10/facebook-offers-hidden-service-to-tor-users/ http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/10/facebook-offers-hidd...
- doublerebel 12y ago
  Whoops, apologies. Accidental mobile downvote. Appreciate the link and knowledge.
- justfane 12y ago
  TOR can be compromised easily however... Edit) So they say...

dmix 12y ago

Since this doesn't seem to be ready to be fully announced yet, I checked last week and Open WhisperSystems is still looking for iOS developers to help. Moxie mentioned on twitter that security and crypto experience is not required, but they are looking for f/t devs not just p/t help. Also they have a browser extension that could use some help from front-end devs: https://github.com/WhisperSystems/TextSecure-Browser https://github.com/WhisperSystems/TextSecure-Browser It is still pretty early but the project has Bithub as well. From my understanding, this is their planned desktop version.

13 12y ago

Why do all of these services insist on you giving them your mobile number? Even Telegram, which claims to be the all giving god of encryption and privacy, insists on having it no matter what. It's a massive barrier to entry which I'm not willing to cross, and I'm sure other people aren't either.

BuildTheRobots 12y ago
Whatsapp requires a telephone number as it uses that for your ID. Same with RedPhone. TextSecure (android) can certainly be used without registering -you just miss out on the push-via-data service.
- 13 12y ago
  > Whatsapp requires a telephone number as it uses that for your ID. I understand that. I'm questioning why they've set such an arbitrary restriction in the first place.
  - mike_hearn 12y ago
    It's not arbitrary. It simplifies things for users a lot. No usernames or passwords to remember. Many telcos link your phone number to your identity which you cannot really lose, so therefore also no chance of losing your WhatsApp account. Also, more importantly, solves the contact discovery/social network problem by letting you reuse the phones address book.
    - 13 12y ago
      You'll find that many people are very reluctant to give up that sort of information about themselves though, whether it be for privacy or because they don't like being incessantly spammed. I understand it existing as an option, maybe even a default, but to make it to the only method of authentication seems insane. Sure, many users will deem that the benefit of using the application overwhelms any negative implications, but it would be nicer if they weren't forced to make that tradeoff in the first place. I'm not against the option existing, I'm against it being the only option.

orblivion 12y ago

I don't suppose they will open source the WhatsApp client as part of this. Assuming so, that sounds like a compromise for Open Whisper Systems.

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patcon 12y ago

This is so unbelievably awesome.

secfirstmd 12y ago

Amazing news!

unicornporn 12y ago

So, does this mean that users of the Android TextSecure app (and perhaps even Signal for iOS) will be able to communicate with WhatsApp users?

nobodyshere 12y ago
Unlikely. Yet they will share the same level of secrecy and encryption for their communications now.
- avn2109 12y ago
  >> "...same level of secrecy..." Well, no. As pointed out elsewhere in this thread, if Whisper Systems doesn't own the whole app, then the Whatsapp code might include code (that they "forget" to show Moxie) that phones home to the Zuckerberg mansion/windowless black buildings in Virgina.

MatthiasP 12y ago

If this is true and has no strings (backdoors) attached this is huge. This means end-to-end encryption for messages from more than half a billion people and an incredible privacy win compared to SMS usage. Brought to you by facebook.

AlyssaRowan 12y ago
I do not think there are likely to be backdoors: Moxie just wouldn't allow it without walking away and saying something loudly. He is not on the NSA's Christmas list. :)
- edwintorok 12y ago
  If the application isn't open-source how can he check though? They can show a version without the backdoor to him and build the binary with the backdoor. Or there could be vulnerabilities elsewhere (not in Moxie's) code. I don't think you can claim no backdoors unless you have the full application under your control, and have it audited.
- nly 12y ago
  Trusting one person simply because they're cool, with the privacy of 600M users, is pretty foolish. Even if everything you say is true, and Moxie signs off on the implementation, nothing prevents men in black suits turning up the day he leaves and suggesting they introduce a subtle bug.
  - balladeer 12y ago
    Agreed. This fanboy kinda trust and reliance can be very damaging.
zanny 12y ago
Meanwhile, XMPP OTR and SRTP on SIP have been around for a decade. Too bad half a billion people are using a proprietary non-ineroperable chat mechanism with no idea what WhatsApp is logging and with no assurance of the continued availability of the service. WhatsApp, Hangouts, Skype, etc are all cancer on interpersonal communications by trying to make it a profit center. They destroy user freedom, they severely limit communication, and they do it while making you think its worth your money when you could host your own XMPP server and delegate with an entire network of chat servers. And no, I do not mean your grandmother should host an XMPP server. Facebook gets props for using XMPP in its messaging implementation, even if they crippled it by not letting users message outside Facebooks network.

g8oz 12y ago

Great news, WhatsApp needs all the help it can get on security matters. https://www.eff.org/secure-messaging-scorecard https://www.eff.org/secure-messaging-scorecard

gonetone 12y ago

can't find any official statement from WhatsApp anywhere. Most of the sources just cite Marlinspike.

andor 12y ago
Yes, it sounds too good to be true. Like the Yes Men's "New York Times Special Edition".

gonetone 12y ago

can't find any official statement from WhatsApp anywhere. Most of the sources just cite Marlinspike.

furyg3 12y ago

"[...] and our roadmap for our own products remains unchanged." What is that roadmap? TextSecure for iOS is stalled... Awesome for Moxie and team, his is huge news. But the world still needs a cross platform, open source, end-to-end encrypted platform... It's just too important to trust Facebook with.

TillE 12y ago
Text messaging for Signal is not "stalled", just still in development. https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-iOS/commits/textSecure https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-iOS/commits/textSec...
- justcommenting 12y ago
  it might be fair to say that it's taken longer to release than the devs anticipated or hoped. but the good news is that anyone here can contribute to the code and help to change that!

estefan 12y ago

...and once this is rolled out, they'll add auto-deleting messages, et voila! Snapchat destroyed over night!

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tptacek 12y ago
That is not why Moxie was "hatin' on" Telegram.
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  - tptacek 12y ago
    You're going to be pretty unhappy (or pretty uninformed) if every time a subject matter expert in security starts a project, you have to discount everything they say about everything in the space their project is in. Yes, I'm going to go ahead and say "zero conflict of interest". Also: he's simply correct. If you'd like to rebut what he said about Telegram, actually rebut it.
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        SamReidHughes 12y ago
        Sorry for the misclicked downvote (to the post I'm replying to). It is very plausible (from my rando perspective) thatq moxie's reaction was greater than it would have been for some other badly done security. But it's also plausible that it's just frustrating to be working on something and then seeing a well-funded attempt to obliterate any good that you might be doing. Which is what Telegram was. Is it a "conflict of interest", if your interests are for secure messaging to become widely used, to attack those which are, thanks to their ineptitude and funding, a plausible threat to your goal? Taking the words "conflict of interest" literally, yes, but it's not an ulterior interest the way the phrase is usually applied. Telegram was also doing a really good job of pushing buttons, going off about how they had Math PhD's. Edit: Hold on, you're saying there was a conflict of interest, in the past, because he's working with WhatsApp now? Do you have any personal knowledge of the timeline here?

thewarrior 12y ago

This is going to backfire big time on WhatsApp and get them banned from many countries like India , Saudi Arabia etc.

robmccoll 12y ago

So how does the initial key exchange work here?

andyjohnson0 12y ago
TextSecure uses the OTR protocol [1,2], which itself uses Diffie-Hellman key exchange [3] to allow the communicating devices to agree on a shared key without the key being transmitted over the channel [4]. OTR actually uses "ephemeral" Diffie-Hellman [5], where a new shared key is generated for each session. This provides forward security by guaranteeing that a key compromise in the future won't render past messages decryptable. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TextSecure http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TextSecure [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-the-Record_Messaging http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-the-Record_Messaging [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffie%E2%80%93Hellman_key_exchange http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffie%E2%80%93Hellman_key_exch... [4] http://security.stackexchange.com/a/45971 http://security.stackexchange.com/a/45971 [5] https://whispersystems.org/blog/advanced-ratcheting/ https://whispersystems.org/blog/advanced-ratcheting/
- rakoo 12y ago
  TextSecure doesn't use OTR, it uses a construction based on the Axolotl ratchet as described here: https://github.com/trevp/axolotl/wiki https://github.com/trevp/axolotl/wiki It's much much better than OTR in that: - Asynchronicity is on by default (you don't need both parties to be up and running at the same time to start a convo) - You don't need to wait for your recipient to answer before you can write something (ie you can send multiple messages one after another, directly) - Because you can do both of the above, you can easily do multiparty, something OTR struggles with. For more details: https://whispersystems.org/blog/asynchronous-security/ https://whispersystems.org/blog/asynchronous-security/ https://whispersystems.org/blog/private-groups/ https://whispersystems.org/blog/private-groups/
  - andyjohnson0 12y ago
    You're right and I was wrong. The TextSecure protocol was originally based on OTR, but I hadn't appreciated the degree of divergence from it required by their introduction of asynchronous ephemeral key negotiation. So, thanks! I learned about some cool stuff.

Tepix 12y ago

This is a huge improvement and I'm very glad that WhatsApp is going this route. However, from my point of view, TextSecure isn't there yet. The ideal solution should be decentralized, like XMPP. That makes gathering meta data so much harder.

Spearchucker 12y ago

I need convincing. Facebook can't monetize end-to-end encryption, and WhatsApp doesn't ask before uploading my contacts. Encryption from the client to the server is a start, but there's not enough here to make me use it.

SideburnsOfDoom 12y ago
> I need convincing. Facebook can't monetize end-to-end encryption, Completely right. Facebook paid $19Bn for whatsapp. How is not being able to keyword-search messages going to help them cover some of that cost? It sounds great but doesn't add up.
- dserodio 12y ago
  In this case, the metadata (who is talking to who, and when) may be more valuable than the messages' contents.

nodata 12y ago

First a million bucks to FreeBSD, now this? Keep it coming WhatsApp!