NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at U.S. allies

Re:NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at... by _trampeltier on Friday November 01, 2019 @04:25AM (#21417027)

"Prior to notifying victims, WhatsApp checked the target list against existing law enforcement requests for information relating to criminal investigations, such as terrorism or child exploitation cases. But the company found no overlap, said a person familiar with the matter. Governments can submit such requests for information to WhatsApp through an online portal the company maintains."

There is already an official backdoor, or how should I understand that?

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Re:NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at... by sandworm101 on Friday November 01, 2019 @05:44AM (#21417297)

You have it correct. Nearly every major US provider maintains some sort of online interface for law enforcement to submit requests. The level of information provided via these means varies, but they are obligated to respond to legitimate requests with wharever data they have on hand.

Dont like it? Go with a security-minded service like signal. Or, better yet, something totally severless and open source.

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Re:NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at... by _trampeltier on Friday November 01, 2019 @05:56AM (#21417331)

I don't use WhatsApp. But if they have an official backdoor, then it's not really e2e encrypted. Until now I thought, at least the official statement was, WhatsApp is truly e2e encrypted. Just that.

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Re:NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at... by sandworm101 on Friday November 01, 2019 @06:01AM (#21417353)

Maybe they are. But they would still have non-content timing, location and connection data. That is just as useful as message content.

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Re:NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at... by y4mi on Friday November 01, 2019 @08:59AM (#21418204)

It can be end to end and Encrypted and still have a backdoor.

I.e keeping a continuous web client active which the user isn't notified about

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Re:NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at... by codedokode on Friday November 01, 2019 @12:06PM (#21420284)

Even with encryption, WhatsApp could provide users' contact lists, message send time and volume, IP addresses, phone numbers.

Having a phone number is almost same as having person's location and identity. That's why really secure messengers won't require a phone number.

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Re:NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at... by secfirstmd on Friday November 01, 2019 @07:29AM (#21417713)

Isn't the fear more about a man-in-the-room attack rather than weaknesses in the e2e?

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Re:NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at... by guenthert on Friday November 01, 2019 @12:32PM (#21420663)

The end-to-end refers there to the hand-held device, not the peers' brains. The backdoor will then simply be in the hand-held device, intercepting the data meant to be displayed by the WhatsApp application.

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Re:NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at... by paulcarroty on Friday November 01, 2019 @07:50AM (#21417796)

> security-minded service like signal.

There's no security-minded service which use Google services.

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Re:NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at... by ryanlol on Friday November 01, 2019 @07:40AM (#21417756)

I don't think it's fair to call this a "backdoor". Because of E2EE the law enforcement access is limited to looking up IP addresses associated with whatsapp users and such.

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Re:NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at... by _trampeltier on Friday November 01, 2019 @09:34AM (#21418564)

That was my question. What information does WhatsApp share with the law enforcement. Just, as you said IP and so, or also the messages?

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Re:NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at... by dicknuckle on Friday November 01, 2019 @08:11PM (#21424999)

if it's truly end to end encrypted, they would only have metadata. which is what the NSA collects en masse from Telecom providers.

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Re:NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at... by ryanlol on Saturday November 02, 2019 @04:47AM (#21426578)

>which is what the NSA collects en masse from Telecom providers

What does that even mean? There are so many different kinds of metadata I'm not sure why it's useful to compare Telecom metadata collection to Whatsapp.

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Re:NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at... by tarcisiocjr on Sunday November 03, 2019 @05:54AM (#21433168)

Here in Brazil, if I understand corrected from some leaks, after the judicial request WhatsApp stop (or something related) the encryption between Bob and Alice. After that all conversations is in plain text and accessible to federal police.

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Re:NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at... by ryanlol on Sunday November 03, 2019 @03:05PM (#21436214)

Do they disable it or do they noisily mitm it?

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