Absolutely agreed. I didn't see this one coming - WhatsApp have earned a very poor reputation for security in the past. But this is an unexpectedly very
good choice, and a very solid step forward.
As closed-source, I still couldn't recommend WhatsApp above Signal/TextSecure, but this means that the squillions of WhatsApp users out there right now will hopefully get strong protection and probably won't even notice - and that's fantastic.
Makes me wonder if perhaps other clients for the TextSecure protocol are viable, maybe even possibly standardisable (although please let's not start going design-by-committee on it, don't allow any changes that haven't been security-reviewed). A desktop TextSecure client is something I would like to have right now.
Especially curious what happens if you properly plug together TextSecure, a DHT (or two), and a mixnet like Tor. (Are you listening, Project Tox?)
As closed-source, I still couldn't recommend WhatsApp above Signal/TextSecure, but this means that the squillions of WhatsApp users out there right now will hopefully get strong protection and probably won't even notice - and that's fantastic.
Makes me wonder if perhaps other clients for the TextSecure protocol are viable, maybe even possibly standardisable (although please let's not start going design-by-committee on it, don't allow any changes that haven't been security-reviewed). A desktop TextSecure client is something I would like to have right now.
Especially curious what happens if you properly plug together TextSecure, a DHT (or two), and a mixnet like Tor. (Are you listening, Project Tox?)