Security Researchers Urge The Guardian To Retract WhatsApp ‘Backdoor’ Story

[Exterminator]

Last week, we reported about a cryptographer who found a supposed vulnerability in WhatsApp and later gave an interview to The Guardian explaining the matter. The cryptographer later posted videos on YouTube explaining his findings and WhatsApp’s response to his claims came in a timely manner.

Cryptographer Tobias Boelter claimed that Facebook and WhatsApp could potentially intercept and rear encrypted messages sent within the app. WhatsApp issued a statement saying that the alleged ‘backdoor’ is actually an intentional design decision so that millions of messages could be delivered to their intended recipients. The developer of WhatsApp’s encryption protocol, Open Whisper Systems also issued a statement backing up WhatsApp’s claims.

Now it seems that security researchers from around the world have come together to defend WhatsApp and urge The Guardian to retract its story. The third-party security researchers have even co-signed an open letter to convince The Guardian to retract its claims, according to TechCrunch.

“WhatsApp remains a great choice for users”
Academic Zeynep Tufekci stated on Twitter that due to The Guardian’s reporting, many users are now switching to less secure messaging applications, thus endangering their privacy.

Zeynep Tufekci authored the open letter which reads “The threat is remote, quite limited in scope, applicability (requiring a server or phone number compromise) and stealthiness (users who have the setting enabled still see a warning–even if after the fact). The fact that warnings exist means that such attacks would almost certainly be quickly detected by security-aware users. This limits this method.”

WhatsApp did say in a statement last week that “The design decision referenced in the Guardian story prevents millions of messages from being lost, and WhatsApp offers people security notifications to alert them to potential security risks.”

Author of the Signal Protocol used in WhatsApp, Moxie Marlinspike recently stated for TechCrunch that The Guardian’s story is “supremely inaccurate”. A blog post by Whisper Systems last week reads “We believe that WhatsApp remains a great choice for users concerned with the privacy of their message content."