WhatsApp has introduced full end-to-end encryption of all data for a billion of its users.
The special services of many countries have a new headache - both voice and text messages, images and video are encrypted.
Today it became known that the WhatsApp messenger (now owned by Facebook) introduces full encryption of all its services for all users. Innovation is relevant to the latest version of the application. This means that the messenger encrypts everything - messages, phone calls, photos, videos that users transmit to each other. It doesn’t matter if 2 people communicate or 10 - the encryption in the new version of the messenger is really complete. Now even WhatsApp employees will not be able to decrypt data transmitted by users.
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Naturally, innovation represents a headache for the special services of different countries. So far, the “fights” between the FBI and Apple have not ended in the case of a terrorist iPhone 5c smartphone that killed several people. The FBI tried in court to force the corporation to do something like a backdoor for unlocking the phone. And here - a new problem for the police and special services, even more difficult than the situation with the iPhone.
Moxi Marlinspike , author of the Signal messenger (Snowden advised to use the messenger) worked together with the founders of the messenger on WhatsApp users data encryption system (Photo source: Wired)
As far as can be judged, now the correspondence of a billion WhatsApp users is becoming inaccessible to government bodies. And the company itself will not be able to decipher user data at the request of the police, even if it wants to do this (for example, by a court decision).
System of data encryption of users WhatsApp (public key encryption). In order to send a message to user B, user A requests from the messenger server the public key for user B. Then user A uses this public key to encrypt the message. User B then uses a private key, available only on his device, to decrypt the received message (Source: Wired )
At the same time, the company will ensure that users install a new version with encryption. For example, if several users communicate, and one of them uses the old version of WhatsApp, the rest will see which interlocutor works without encryption, and will be able to notify him about it. Description of the encryption protocol is available at this link (pdf).
The number of users of various instant messengers and social networks. Whatsapp is behind only Facebook
The messenger began to introduce encryption by default for some types of messages back in 2014. But it worked only for phones of certain models and worked in certain situations. At the same time, users did not know what was encrypted and whether it was encrypted. For 18 months, developers have expanded the ability to encrypt user data, and now they have entered it in full.
Now what?
Whole billion users who communicate privately are a daunting challenge for many governments. The legality of whatsapp's work in various countries, where the government requires full access to user data, is now under question.
For example, in Russia, some representatives of the government have long been showing discontent regarding the encryption of data from Telegram users. But this messenger has 10 times fewer users than WhatsApp.
And in the US, this will be a problem for the FBI - in the light of what happened, the relationship with Apple and their refusal to provide a backdoor for unlocking their phone fade into the background.
Well, we will wait for the development of events.
Today it became known that the WhatsApp messenger (now owned by Facebook) introduces full encryption of all its services for all users. Innovation is relevant to the latest version of the application. This means that the messenger encrypts everything - messages, phone calls, photos, videos that users transmit to each other. It doesn’t matter if 2 people communicate or 10 - the encryption in the new version of the messenger is really complete. Now even WhatsApp employees will not be able to decrypt data transmitted by users.
')
Naturally, innovation represents a headache for the special services of different countries. So far, the “fights” between the FBI and Apple have not ended in the case of a terrorist iPhone 5c smartphone that killed several people. The FBI tried in court to force the corporation to do something like a backdoor for unlocking the phone. And here - a new problem for the police and special services, even more difficult than the situation with the iPhone.
Moxi Marlinspike , author of the Signal messenger (Snowden advised to use the messenger) worked together with the founders of the messenger on WhatsApp users data encryption system (Photo source: Wired)
As far as can be judged, now the correspondence of a billion WhatsApp users is becoming inaccessible to government bodies. And the company itself will not be able to decipher user data at the request of the police, even if it wants to do this (for example, by a court decision).
System of data encryption of users WhatsApp (public key encryption). In order to send a message to user B, user A requests from the messenger server the public key for user B. Then user A uses this public key to encrypt the message. User B then uses a private key, available only on his device, to decrypt the received message (Source: Wired )
At the same time, the company will ensure that users install a new version with encryption. For example, if several users communicate, and one of them uses the old version of WhatsApp, the rest will see which interlocutor works without encryption, and will be able to notify him about it. Description of the encryption protocol is available at this link (pdf).
The number of users of various instant messengers and social networks. Whatsapp is behind only Facebook
The messenger began to introduce encryption by default for some types of messages back in 2014. But it worked only for phones of certain models and worked in certain situations. At the same time, users did not know what was encrypted and whether it was encrypted. For 18 months, developers have expanded the ability to encrypt user data, and now they have entered it in full.
Now what?
Whole billion users who communicate privately are a daunting challenge for many governments. The legality of whatsapp's work in various countries, where the government requires full access to user data, is now under question.
For example, in Russia, some representatives of the government have long been showing discontent regarding the encryption of data from Telegram users. But this messenger has 10 times fewer users than WhatsApp.
And in the US, this will be a problem for the FBI - in the light of what happened, the relationship with Apple and their refusal to provide a backdoor for unlocking their phone fade into the background.
Well, we will wait for the development of events.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/392573/
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