Re:Vulnerability That Allowed Hackers to Take Over WhatsApp ...
by homakov on Wednesday March 15, 2017 @07:01PM
(#13880736)
Telegram web doesn't support so called secret chats - good reason to use a native client. No idea about whatsapp.
Re:Vulnerability That Allowed Hackers to Take Over WhatsApp ...
by ryanlol on Wednesday March 15, 2017 @10:04PM
(#13881783)
Whatsapp web is super difficult to use. It requires your phone to be in your hand every time you start using it, your phone must also remain on and connected to the internet.
Re:Vulnerability That Allowed Hackers to Take Over WhatsApp ...
by morsch on Thursday March 16, 2017 @08:07AM
(#13884320)
That's incorrect. You need your phone to log in, but you only have to sign in once per browser. (I assume sessions time out at some point. You can also invalidate existing sessions in the app.)
It's correct that the phone does have to be online while you're using it. But at least you don't lose encryption. Somehow, Signal's web-based client manages to do e2e without that requirement; maybe there's a non-technical reason why WhatsApp does it the way they do.
... said the standalone email program developer, ca 2005. Couldn't find any numbers for Telegram, but in 2015 the number of WhatsApp Web users was reported[1] to be 200 million, which seems like a lot of people. Most of them probably aren't aware a desktop version exists, nor would they care.
[1] http://www.ibtimes.com/whatsapp-web-security-bug-puts-200-mi... in articles about a very similar WhatsApp Web bug, also found by Checkpoint. They don't bother to give a verifiable reference for the 200 million, fwiw.