this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2023
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TeCHnology

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WhatsApp security test identifies weakness (www.swissinfo.ch)
submitted 2 years ago by _Frog@feddit.ch to c/technology@feddit.ch
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The messenger service WhatsApp no longer has access to the more than 100 billion daily messages on its platform, a comprehensive security test funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) has concluded. One identified weakness can be resolved with a strong password.

An end-to-end encryption is used to ensure the confidentiality of WhatsApp. However, until recently, the automatic backup of the chats did not offer the same security, according to a statementExternal link by the SNSF. This is because the personal key to the data stored in the cloud was known to the company.

“Backups were safe from everyone apart from WhatsApp itself,” said Julia Hesse, a cryptographer from the IBM Research Institute in Zurich who has received funding from the SNSF.

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[–] ebits21@lemmy.ca 10 points 2 years ago

I’m sure the engineers just overlooked this. 🙄

[–] philluminati@lemmy.ml 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

“Backups were safe from everyone apart from WhatsApp itself”

This was always a safe assumption. As well as backing anything up to iCloud. That’s the point where messages are unencrypted.