this post was submitted on 24 Feb 2024
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Signal and Threema want nothing to do with WhatsApp (www.androidpolice.com)
submitted 8 months ago by throws_lemy@lemmy.nz to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] federal_explorer@discuss.tchncs.de 63 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Signal refusing to federate with WhatsApp, even though meta says they will still use the signal protocol is the most bone headed decision I have ever seen from them.

There no better chance to break the network effect than this.

[–] Gimpydude@lemmynsfw.com 29 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Meta could easily have the WhatsApp client upload decryption keys to their servers without any notification to the user.

[–] Flumpkin@slrpnk.net 13 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Not sure what you mean, of course WhatsApp can disable it's own encryption. That would be an argument for open source third party apps and interoperability.

[–] Gimpydude@lemmynsfw.com 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

What I'm talking about has nothing to do with the line protocol. Each client has encryption key pairs. The public key of the first party shares it with the other parties, and vice versa. If it's encrypted with the public key then the private key can decrypt it.

If Meta gets the private keys, they can decrypt any message they want independent of whatever protocol is being used.

[–] Flumpkin@slrpnk.net 4 points 8 months ago

But aren't these key pairs generated per session and/or per contact? So once you switch to a more secure / auditable client this only matters when communicating with people on whatsapp. But they presumably have a backdoor in their app for the NSA anyway.

[–] erwan@lemmy.ml 18 points 8 months ago

Yeah that sucks, Signal is my preferred app and I wish I could get rid of WhatsApp without having to convert everyone.