How to disable WhatsApp end-to-end encryption. Are WhatsApp messages protected by encryption? Everything about encrypting correspondence on WhatsApp. Upgrade to end-to-end encryption
After the Snowden story, most sympathetic paranoids began to focus on the topic of encrypting data transmitted via the Internet with renewed vigor. Serious guys had already encrypted everything they needed before, so this topic passed them by. However, as it turned out, simple encryption is not enough. It is necessary to provide so-called end-to-end encryption.
Everyone’s favorite instant messengers turned out to be especially vulnerable, where messages were either not encrypted at all, or were encrypted in a way that I will now describe. There is one encryption key, which is controlled by the messenger developer. Your message is encrypted using this key and sent to the messenger server, decrypted there, the message is recorded in history, encrypted again, sent to your interlocutor and decrypted there. This encryption scheme is not end-to-end and only protects against attackers between you and the messenger server. For example, if you are sitting somewhere in a cafe on free Wi-Fi, then it is useless to intercept your traffic because it is encrypted, but the attackers do not know the decryption key. The main disadvantage of this scheme is that your entire message history is available to intelligence agencies at almost any time upon request. In the civilized world, you are of no interest to the intelligence services: they have enough work to do without you. And in a not very civilized world, intelligence services can abuse their position, for example, help “their own” find out what they need about you.
End-to-end encryption is designed to help you get encrypted. In this case, only you and your interlocutor know the encryption key. Your message is encrypted with this key, sent to the messenger server, where it cannot be decrypted because the server does not know your key. The message goes to your interlocutor in transit unchanged and is decrypted by him. The disadvantage of the scheme is that the message history is stored only locally in the application. When you reinstall the application, the history is lost.
A couple of years ago, only Signal and maybe Wire had end-to-end encryption. All other messengers (Viber, Skype, WhatsApp, iMessage) were more or less unsafe. Of course, it was impossible to lag behind the trend. First, end-to-end encryption appeared in Viber, and then in WhatsApp. Telegram has also been added to these two.
Skype belongs to Microsoft, which, in turn, never refuses to the intelligence services, and they did not introduce anything additional. The picture is somewhat better with iMessage, which belongs to Apple.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has compiled and periodically updates messenger security rating. So, for example, WhatsApp and Telegram can be considered conditionally safe among the popular chat rooms.
The convention is that popular instant messengers are commercial products with closed source code, which means no one will be able to check the presence or absence of specially provided loopholes. Therefore, if you expect a good level of security here, then you need to blindly trust the developers of these messengers. As it turned out recently, it was in vain.
The developers of the Facebook-owned WhatsApp messenger, who insisted that it was impossible for unauthorized persons to read user correspondence, actually provided a loophole that allows them to intercept any messages. According to independent cryptography expert Tobias Belter from the University of California at Berkeley, this possibility is provided by WhatsApp's own implementation of the encryption protocol.
WhatsApp's encryption system is based on generating unique security keys. The authenticity of the keys is verified on the users' side, which ensures that messages cannot be intercepted by third parties. However, the messenger developers have provided a backdoor that allows you to forcefully create a new key, re-encrypt and send the message. Thanks to its re-encryption and relay mechanism, Belter said, WhatsApp can intercept and read messages without the recipient or sender knowing. According to Belter, he notified Facebook about the backdoor in the spring of 2016, but company representatives said that this was not a mistake, but that it was intended.
A perfect example of how all this end-to-end encryption is nothing more than a fashionable trend.
If you need encryption in action and not in words, you need to use non-commercial open source messengers. For example, Signal or Pidgin. Yes, they are not as convenient as Viber or WhatsApp, and the interface is a little awkward and crooked. But it's safe.
, April 7, 2016End-to-end encryption in WhatsApp, no less, means 100% confidentiality of correspondence, which becomes available exclusively to the interlocutors involved in communication, excluding tracking by outsiders.
Yesterday evening I exchanged instant messages on WhatsApp with a friend from another city, when a notification about the launch of end-to-end encryption of messages and calls was displayed on the screen.
What such end-to-end encryption?
End-to-end encryption technology (also called “end-to-end” encryption" or " E2EE) is a method of data transmission in which only the sender and recipient have access to the transmitted information. In the case of WhatsApp this means that messages, calls, photos or videos sent and received are fully encrypted using special cryptographic keys. The decryption key is available exclusively to the interlocutor, so neither interceptors, nor government agencies, nor even the server itself will be able to decrypt messages. WhatsApp, through which data is transferred. Even in the case of a hypothetical interception of information by attackers, the use of modern encryption technology makes it almost impossible to gain access to its contents.
Your messages in the servicewhatsapp is now 100% confidential (in the newest version of the program )
I confess in good spirit - although I have nothing to hide, I still don’t want anyone else to read my personal correspondence, listen to my calls or look through family photos. Thanks to the new E2EE encryption function in the popular messenger, all correspondence is securely encrypted and in order to gain access to it and its contents, you now have to try very hard, which in my case (as in the case of the lion's share of the messenger audience), is hardly probably.
Yours messages encrypted?
Great news - WhatsApp configured encryption of all transmitted data by default for all users of the latest version of the program. All you need to do for this is update the messenger. It is important to emphasize that encryption technology is only effective when your interlocutor is using the latest version of the program WhatsApp. If even one group member is not using the latest version of the program, all group members are automatically at risk of compromise. If you want to check the status of your chats, click on the person's image. The bottom of the dialog box that appears will indicate whether encryption is enabled.
In the picture below you can see that one of my group members has not yet updated WhatsApp, so all information published in the group is unencrypted.
A step forward to personal privacy
Filip Chytry, head of mobile threat research at Avast, said in this regard: “It's just great thatwhatsapp began to encrypt all data exchange in its service by default, following the existing security standard that has been used for quite some time, for example, in the T messenger elegram. For the average user, this means a guarantee of confidentiality of personal correspondence, which in itself is good news.
Thanks to encryption, now even WhatsApp itselfcannot view the correspondence of its users. In fairness, it is worth noting that this does not yet apply to meta data, that is, WhatsAppcan still see who exactly you are chatting with, but not the content of your conversation.”
WhatsApp messenger transition The move to fully encrypt user correspondence occurred against the backdrop of a rapid increase in incidents of confidential data leaks, increasing surveillance of users by government agencies and large corporations, when the topic of privacy on the Internet is widely discussed not only by professionals, but also among a wide range of ordinary users. All the more significant is the fact that one update to the messenger version is enough to protect a billion people from tracking personal correspondence by outsiders.
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In one of the articles we talked about how, using Android and iOS devices as an example, you can get information from the Telegram messenger. Today we will talk about the mechanisms for encrypting and decrypting data in the WhatsApp messenger.
Introduction
Almost all of us use various applications to make calls and send messages in our daily lives. This type of communication has its advantages: it is convenient and free. Currently, there are many different messengers (WhatsApp, Telegram, Viber, etc.), and every user sooner or later wonders how safe it is to use this or that messenger. We wrote about the security of Telegram in the article.
It is worth noting that this issue always worries attackers, who also use this type of communication to communicate with each other.
Figure 1. Comparison of instant messengers
On this topic, readers will also probably be interested in the detailed one that we recently published.
WhatsApp Data Encryption
Why encrypt messages and calls?
This is exactly what encryption is for. This mechanism encrypts all transmitted data and even if someone is able to intercept it, they will not be able to read or use it. I talked a little about traffic interception in my recent one. Encryption protects us from MITM attacks, which can be easily organized by intelligence agencies or other authorities simply by contacting the provider. But if the transmitted data is encrypted - even if the provider provides access - no one will be able to decrypt the data without having a private key - yours or the interlocutor's. This is what they say on the Whatsapp support site:
How does encryption work in Whatsapp?
This means that even if the data passes through the servers of Whatsapp itself, it passes there in the same encrypted form. Accordingly, no one except chat participants will be able to read them.
How to enable Whatsapp encryption?
It is enabled by default, just update the version of the program to the one where the feature is already enabled.
After which you will see the following message in the chat, where both participants have the encrypted version:
If you click on this message, an explanation will appear and a button through which you can check the encryption. In this case, you will need to scan QR codes on each other’s phones. This feature only allows you to check that it has no effect on enabling or disabling encryption. Moreover, it is impossible to disable it.
What is encryption in WhatsApp? This question has become popular recently due to the fact that on many smartphones in the messenger of the same name a window has appeared with the text: “The messages you send to this chat and calls are now protected by encryption. To learn more". This is due to the program update: the developer introduced a full data encryption system to ensure the security of its clients.
What is encryption on WhatsApp?
How does the protection of information inside the chat work after the innovation? Encryption - that is, reversible recoding of data - occurs using end-to-end encryption technology. This is end-to-end encryption of messages in WhatsApp, thanks to which no one, even employees of the development company, will be able to read absolutely nothing that is written in the chat. A conversation on WhatsApp is encrypted regardless of the number of participants: from two in a personal conversation to many in a group correspondence.
Thus, it is easy to answer the question of what it means on WhatsApp: “Messages and calls are protected by encryption.” There is nothing negative about this update. For the first time, such technology was used in the Telegram application. Pavel Durov, who owns this product, launched the updated version after learning from Edward Snowden's messages about the massive wiretapping of calls and viewing messages of US citizens by their own intelligence agencies. Durov considered it necessary to invent a method that would qualitatively increase the level of user protection, and launched the end-to-end encryption conversion.
It is important to note that in WhatsApp data encryption occurs at all levels: encryption is relevant not only for text, but also for all multimedia files: photos, music, videos. Moreover, the new version of the utility even encrypts voice calls.
How to enable WhatsApp encryption
The message that encryption of WhatsApp correspondence is enabled did not appear for all users. Therefore, users familiar with the latest news in the world of software are wondering: how to encrypt a message on WhatsApp? How to configure this feature? In fact, no tricky manipulations are required. Anyone who has updated to the latest version has already enabled encryption. This means that the feature now works by default.
In June 2016, almost all Android smartphone users and iPhone owners (ios operating system) have this update. But to make sure that end-to-end encryption is happening, it's worth checking your version. To do this, you need to go into the settings and make sure that the “Encryption” column appears there.
How to remove encryption in WhatsApp?
If for some reason the user wants to undo the re-encoding of his web data, he wonders how to disable encryption in WhatsApp. At this stage, this is impossible, since such a desire - to delete, turn off, remove recoding - in principle has no logical basis.
If it is vital for the user, the update can simply be canceled by rolling back the entire system. It is important not to forget to uncheck the auto-update option for this program so that history does not repeat itself.
How do I enable security notifications?
To do this you need:
So, the new final processing of information from the WhatsApp developers is a great way to make your smartphone more secure and protect yourself from web attacks aimed at monitoring personal information.
