whatsapp

The UK government has gotten a rejection of its request earlier this year asking WhatsApp to build a backdoor that will allow it to access data on criminals using the chat service to communicate. 

The UK government, after a series of terrorist attacks on it soil has called for the backdoor from tech companies like Telegram and WhatsApp, a well known service by terrorist to communicate because of the encryption service both services provide.

The UK government is looking to reach a compromise with tech companies that will allow it to accept the warrant during investigations, but the tech companies believe such security compromise with government will undermine the security services they had promised their users.

The issue between government accessing users' messages and tech companies started with the UK government after they could not read the messages sent and received by Khalid Masood, a perpetrator of the Westminster attack.

The UK government is not the only one seeking to have access to the information, the US government Vs Apple too happened after the  San Bernardino attack. The back and forth court case generated a lot of reactions from citizens that believes that Apple should not protect people that are attacking US citizens, including the then candidate Trump, saying he would ditch his Apple Phone for Samsung if Apple won't help FBI access the messages of the San Bernadino attackers.

Tim Cook while responding to the allegations, said that weakening encryption for the government will only affect the public while terrorists will find other ways to communicate as they always do.

Security experts are warning users of some flaw in Whatsapp configuration that could expose your Whatsapp conversation to hackers. The warning came after Amnesty international endorse Whatsapp as the most secured platform to chat with.

Few security experts have disagreed with this decision from Amnesty International, and one of such disagreement is coming from Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), an organization dubbed the most biggest technology in the world, due to how transparent and protective it is of their users.

Though Whatsapp uses an end- to-end encryption services for its 1 Billion users worldwide. The encryption allows that your texts, images, PDFs will be scrambled and cannot be deciphered either by hackers or government agencies.

However, the EFF has warned users to be careful about how users use sensitive information, because they might be read by someone else because of Whatapp unencrypted backups.

While your messages are well encrypted when using the app, the company did not encrypt the backups they make for your conversations. As a user of the app, when you lost your phone stolen, you will realize when you login on Whatsapp, your backup information is restored.

That means that your information could be stored in the cloud which might not be encrypted, and cybercriminals could break into it and read whatever you have on your cloud backup.

In a blogpost by EFF;

In order to back messages up in a way that makes them restorable without a passphrase in the future, these backups need to be stored unencrypted at rest.

Upon first install, WhatsApp prompts you to choose how often you wish to backup your messages: daily, weekly, monthly, or never.

In [our Surveillance Self Defense guide], we have advised users to never back up their messages to the cloud, since that would deliver unencrypted copies of your message log to the cloud provider.

In order for your communications to be truly secure, any contact you chat with must do the same.