A 10-month Commerce Department probe concluded Meta could view all WhatsApp messages in unencrypted form

  • Rivalarrival@lemmy.today
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    6 hours ago

    That means there’s a software switch that dumps a plaintext copy of a supposedly encrypted message when flipped.

    Kinda, sorta, but no, not really. What’s happening is that the recipient is decrypting the message. When you report the message, you include a cleartext copy with your report.

    The “switch” you are talking about is in the same app that is doing the decryption. For the bad actor to toggle that “switch”, they would have to control the app.

    • Flagstaff@programming.dev
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      4 hours ago

      For the bad actor to toggle that “switch”, they would have to control the app.

      Are you talking about physical control? Regardless, it’s closed-source… There is nothing that says they can’t also generate the keys on the other end that they had your devices generate. Outside of open source code that’s buildable from source, they can claim whatever they want about lack of access to switches.