Security News > 2021 > September > WhatsApp to Finally Let Users Encrypt Their Chat Backups in the Cloud
WhatsApp on Friday announced it will roll out support for end-to-end encrypted chat backups on the cloud for Android and iOS users, paving the way for storing information such as chat messages and photos in Apple iCloud or Google Drive in a cryptographically secure manner.
"With the introduction of end-to-end encrypted backups, WhatsApp has created an HSM based Backup Key Vault to securely store per-user encryption keys for user backups in tamper-resistant storage, thus ensuring stronger security of users' message history," the company said in a whitepaper.
"With end-to-end encrypted backups enabled, before storing backups in the cloud, the client encrypts the chat messages and all the messaging data that is being backed up using a random key that's generated on the user's device," it added.
Users have the option of providing a 64-digit encryption key instead of a password - but in this scenario, the encryption key will have to be stored manually given that it will no longer be sent to the HSM Backup Key Vault.
Unencrypted cloud backups have been a major security loophole using which law enforcement agencies have been able to access WhatsApp chats to gather incriminating evidence pertaining to criminal investigations.
"WhatsApp is the first global messaging service at this scale to offer end-to-end encrypted messaging and backups, and getting there was a really hard technical challenge that required an entirely new framework for key storage and cloud storage across operating systems," said Facebook's chief executive Mark Zuckerberg in a post.