wcathcart

Will here from WhatsApp. Really agree with this comment.

What this article is really about is a long-known issue that affects all internet traffic, not a vulnerability in WhatsApp and the article risks a ton of confusion for people who rely on end-to-end encryption.

We debate possible or emerging threats internally - sometimes quite energetically - because that’s how we find ways to add even more security to WhatsApp.

And we continue to ship advanced security features or improvements. For example, last year we introduced call relaying to mask IP address between calls, and we’ve also added an option to disable link previews as part of a series of advanced privacy settings.

We have a strong track record of being loud when we find issues and working to hold bad actors accountable and that’s what we’ll continue to do.

It's true in every country. We are a global service, and our policy on backdoors is the same everywhere: we do not have them and we vigorously oppose them.

Sometimes this leads to us being blocked. We were blocked in Brazil, for example, but that block was overturned in the courts.

We do not.

You don't have to take our word on this -- I wouldn't want you to. As others on this thread have pointed out it's possible enough to tear through our binaries that if we did have a backdoor it would be discovered.

Will not. We are completely opposed to this. Backdoors are a horrible idea and any government who suggests them is proposing weakening the security and privacy of everyone.

We were surprised to read this story and are not aware of discussions that would force us to change our product.

We believe people have a fundamental right to have private conversations. End-to-end encryption protects that right for over a billion people every day.

We will always oppose government attempts to build backdoors because they would weaken the security of everyone who uses WhatsApp including governments themselves. In times like these we must stand up both for the security and the privacy of our users everywhere. We will continue do so.

Will, Head of WhatsApp

I wasn't involved in the talk so can't speak in detail to it, but as I understand it the purpose of it was to explore spaces other than messaging. For example, one of the applications they showed was making abuse detection more robust to URL cloaking.

We haven't added a backdoor to WhatsApp. The Forbes contributor referred to a technical talk about client side AI in general to conclude that we might do client side scanning of content on WhatsApp for anti-abuse purposes.

To be crystal clear, we have not done this, have zero plans to do so, and if we ever did it would be quite obvious and detectable that we had done it. We understand the serious concerns this type of approach would raise which is why we are opposed to it.