Security News
WhatsApp is rolling out end-to-end encrypted chat backups on iOS and Android to prevent anyone from accessing your chats, regardless of where they are stored. Currently, WhatsApp allows you to create backups of all your chats and store them on online storage services.
Facebook's WhatsApp on Thursday began a global rollout of end-to-end encryption for message backups, which offers Android and iOS users with the ability to protect WhatsApp messages stored in Google Drive and Apple iCloud. WhatsApp claims no other similarly large global messaging service provides E2E encryption for users' stored communications and media - WhatsApp has more than 2bn users and in some regions serves as the de facto communications platform.
Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp are starting to come back online after a BGP routing issue caused an over five-hour worldwide outage. As explained by Giorgio Bonfiglio, a Principal TAM at Amazon AWS, various Facebook routing prefixes had suddenly disappeared from the Internet's BGP routing tables, effectively making it impossible to connect to any services hosted on their IP addresses.
As of Monday afternoon, Facebook had been flat on its face for hours, suffering a simultaneous worldwide outage not only on its main site, but also at its Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger and Oculus VR subsidiaries. The New York Times reported that Facebook's internal communications platform, Workplace, was also dragged offline, "Leaving most employees unable to do their jobs." It's been a thumb-twiddling afternoon, the Times reported, with two Facebook employees comparing it to a "Snow day."
Users worldwide are reporting that they are unable to access Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, instead seeing errors that the sites can't be reached. When attempting to open any of the three sites, they are given DNS PROBE FINISHED NXDOMAIN errors and advised to check if there is a typo in the domain entered in the address bar.
End-to-end encryption isn't designed to secure messages against the intended recipients. New revelations about WhatsApp's moderator access to messages last week might seem like they run counter to the company's privacy-forward brand, but a closer look shows the messaging service's privacy protections remain in place and are operating as intended.
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.
Facebook's WhatsApp on Friday said users will soon be able to store end-to-end encrypted backups of their chat history on Google Drive in Android or Apple iCloud in iOS, with an option to self-manage the encryption key. "We're adding another layer of privacy and security to WhatsApp: an end-to-end encryption option for the backups people choose to store in Google Drive or iCloud," said Facebook supremo Mark Zuckerberg in a missive on his platform.
The ProPublica report says that WhatsApp contractors "Sift through streams of private messages, images and videos that have been reported by WhatsApp users as improper and then screened by the company's artificial intelligence systems." WhatsApp in a statement emailed to The Register pushed back against ProPublica's claims.
Ireland's Data Privacy Commissioner has hit Facebook-owned messaging platform WhatsApp with a €225 million administrative fine for violating the EU's GDPR privacy regulation after failing to inform users and non-users on what it does with their data. EU data regulators can impose maximum GDPR fines of up to €20 million or 4% of the infringing company's annual global turnover - whichever is greater - for violating EU's privacy laws.