#whatsapp encryption

The Centre on Monday told the Delhi High Court that WhatsApp was treating Indian users differently from its European ones with regard to opting out of its new privacy policy, and this was a matter of concern for the government which is looking into it.

The central government told the high court that it was also a matter of concern that Indian users were being "unilaterally" subjected to the change in privacy policy by social networking platform WhatsApp.

The submissions were made before Justice Sanjeev Sachdeva by Additional Solicitor General Chetan Sharma during hearing of a petition by a lawyer against the new privacypolicy of the social networking platform owned by Facebook.

As the debate rages over new WhatsApp data sharing policy, another Facebook family product called Messenger does not offer any end-to-end protection and is more prone to data breach, a security expert has claimed, adding that Messenger users should opt for safer apps first.

According to cybersecurity specialist Zak Doffman, we should stop using Facebook Messenger as there is no proper protection of our messages, reports Forbes.

WhatsApp emphasises that it cannot see your private messages, nor listen to your calls, and neither can Facebook.

However, according to Doffman, if you are a Messenger user, you do not have the same data encryption.

Facebook has clearly told US Attorney General William Barr that the social networking giant will neither remove encryption from its messaging apps nor will provide law enforcement agencies access to its encrypted services.

"As a company that supports 2.7 billion users around the world, it is our responsibility to use the very best technology available to protect their privacy. Encrypted messaging is the leading form of online communication and the vast majority of the billions of online messages that are sent daily, including on WhatsApp, iMessage, and Signal, are already protected with end-to-end encryption," said WhatsApp head Will Cathcart and Facebook Messenger's chief Stan Chudnovsky, in a letter to Barr on Tuesday.

WhatsApp on Thursday introduced fingerprint lock on supported Android phones to help users protect their chats from being seen by hackers, family members or jilted lovers.

Users who install the new version of WhatsApp will have to scan a fingerprint to open up the Facebook-owned platform.

"Earlier this year, we rolled out Touch ID and Face ID for iPhone to provide an extra layer of security for WhatsApp users," the micro-blogging platform said in a statement.

"Today we're introducing similar authentication, allowing you to unlock the app with your fingerprint, on supported Android phones," it added.

To enable it, tap Settings, go to Account, then Privacy and Fingerprint Lock.

Turn on Unlock with fingerprint, and confirm your fingerprint. Read More

The discovery that hackers could snoop on WhatsApp should alert users of supposedly secure messaging apps to an uncomfortable truth: “End-to-end encryption” sounds nice — but if anyone can get into your phone’s operating system, they will be able to read your messages without having to decrypt them.

According to a report in the Financial Times on Tuesday, the spyware that exploited the vulnerability was Pegasus, made by the Israeli company NSO. The malware could access a phone’s camera and microphone, open messages, capture what appears on a user’s screen, and log keystrokes — rendering encryption pointless. It works on all operating systems, including Apple’s iOS, Google’s Android, and Microsoft’s rarely used mobile version of Windows.

The cybersecurity community has known about it for years, and activists have been raising hell about its use against dissidents and journalists in dozens of countries — although NSO itself says it doesn’t sell Pegasus to unsavory regimes and that it is disabled in the US. Read More

By Kevin Roose, NY Times, July 6, 2017

In a bygone analog era, lawmakers and corporate chiefs traveled great distances to swap secrets, to the smoke-filled back rooms of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, or the watering holes at the annual Allen & Company conference in Sun Valley, Idaho.

But these days, entering the corridors of power is as easy as opening an app.

Secure messaging apps like WhatsApp, Signal and Confide are making inroads among lawmakers, corporate executives and other prominent communicators. Spooked by surveillance and wary of being exposed by hackers, they are switching from phone calls and emails to apps that allow them to send encrypted and self-destructing texts. These apps have obvious benefits, but their use is causing problems in heavily regulated industries, where careful record-keeping is standard procedure.

“By and large, email is still used for formal conversations,” said Juleanna Glover, a corporate consultant based in Washington. “But for quick shots, texting is the medium of choice.”

Texting apps are already creating headaches on Wall Street, where financial regulations require firms to preserve emails, instant messages and other business-related correspondence.

In March, Christopher Niehaus, an investment banker with the Jefferies Group in London, resigned from his job and was fined nearly $50,000 by British regulators after disclosing confidential client information to a friend over WhatsApp. Deutsche Bank barred its employees from texting and using WhatsApp on their work phones in an effort to curtail underground communication. And last year, prosecutors charged Navnoor Kang, a portfolio manager at the New York State Common Retirement Fund, with securities fraud, accusing him of taking bribes as part of a pay-to-play scheme. According to the indictment, Mr. Kang and his co-conspirators plotted their deeds over, you guessed it, WhatsApp.

The appeal of these apps is no big mystery. Cyberattacks on prominent people--like the 2014 hack of Sony Pictures executives and the WikiLeaks release of emails from John D. Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s former campaign chairman--have put the Davos class on high alert. And President Trump’s election in November led to a boom in business for encrypted texting apps among those who feared he would intensify surveillance tactics. Whether they are trying to evade the law, arrange fragile deals or just talk candidly without fear of being snooped on, business executives and other leaders have many reasons for wanting a private back channel.

“After the 2016 election, there’s an assumption that at some point, everyone’s emails will be made public,” said Alex Conant, a partner at the public affairs firm Firehouse Strategies and a former spokesman for Senator Marco Rubio of Florida. Most people are now aware, Mr. Conant said, that “if you want to have truly private conversations, it needs to be over one of those encrypted apps.”

For now, America’s elites seem to be using secure apps mostly for one-on-one conversations, but the days of governance by group text might not be far-off. Last year, a group affiliated with Britain’s Conservative Party was discovered to be using a secret WhatsApp conversation to coordinate a pro-”Brexit” messaging campaign, while a separate WhatsApp group was being used by politicians backing the Remain effort. Steve Baker, the Conservative member of Parliament who led the pro-”Brexit” group, told The Telegraph that WhatsApp was “extremely effective” as a tool for political coordination.

Encrypted chat and email programs have existed for years, but many were clunky and hard to use. That changed when WhatsApp, a messaging program owned by Facebook with more than a billion users, turned on encryption by default for all of its users last year, making it simple for even the tech-averse to talk securely.

Few issues produce bipartisan consensus in Washington these days, but the secure messaging trend has drawn criticism from all sides. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a watchdog group, recently filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, alleging that Mr. Trump and his associates were “ignoring or outright flouting” public records laws by using texting apps like Confide. Judicial Watch, a conservative group, sued the Environmental Protection Agency over its staff members’ reported use of Signal, calling the app’s popularity among government workers “disturbing” and saying that it “may make it difficult for their work to be overseen.”

“It’s a serious issue that part of the legal record is being destroyed,” said John Wonderlich, the executive director of the Sunlight Foundation, a group that advocates open government. “Lots of record-keeping requirements don’t work very well at all for the modern world.”

Secure chats are especially tough to regulate, because they leave few traces by design. But scrutiny of the practice is growing. In March, David S. Ferriero, the nation’s archivist, sent a memo to officials at federal agencies reminding them that they were “responsible for properly managing electronic messages that are federal records” across a wide range of communications systems.

Representative Mike Quigley, Democrat of Illinois, recently introduced the Communications Over Various Feeds Electronically for Engagement (or Covfefe) Act, which would extend the reach of the Presidential Records Act to include social media posts and other digital records. Despite the groaner of a name, a cheeky reference to Mr. Trump’s now-infamous misspelled Twitter post, Mr. Quigley’s bill addresses a very real issue: As of now, tweets and other social media posts are not explicitly named as protected records.

Daniel Jacobson, a White House lawyer during the Obama administration, told me that the use of apps like Signal and Confide among Trump administration officials might technically amount to criminal activity, under laws that prohibit the destruction of government property. And while White House staff members are unlikely to go to jail for texting, he said that preserving public records was an essential democratic norm, no matter which apps officials use.

AFP, March 26, 2017

London (AFP)--The British government said Sunday that its security services must have access to encrypted messaging applications such as WhatsApp, as it revealed that the service was used by the man behind the parliament attack.

Khalid Masood, the 52-year-old Briton who killed four people in a rampage in Westminster on Wednesday before being shot dead, reportedly used the Facebook-owned service moments before the assault.

Home Secretary Amber Rudd told Sky News it was “completely unacceptable” that police and security services had not been able to crack the heavily encrypted service.

“You can’t have a situation where you have terrorists talking to each other--where this terrorist sent a WhatsApp message--and it can’t be accessed,” she said.

Police said Saturday that they still did not know why Masood, a Muslim convert with a violent criminal past, carried out the attack and that he probably acted alone, despite a claim of responsibility by the Islamic State group.

“There should be no place for terrorists to hide,” Rudd said in a separate interview with the BBC.

“We need to make sure that organisations like WhatsApp--and there are plenty of others like that--don’t provide a secret place for terrorists to communicate with each other.”

She said end-to-end encryption was vital to cyber security, to ensure that business, banking and other transactions were safe--but said it must also be accessible.

Rudd said she did not yet intend to force the industry’s hand with new legislation, but would meet key players on Thursday to discuss this issue, as well as the “constant battle” against extremist videos posted online.