One of the contentious points with the Guardian story was that it endangered people because they would switch to less secure forms of communications over fears that the government was listening. Marlinspike is the developer of Signal, the protocol that gives WhatsApp its end-to-end encryption.

“It provides transparent and cryptographically guaranteed confidence in the privacy of a user's communication, along with a simple user experience,” wrote Moxie Marlinspike on the Open Whispers blog. Security experts agree that WhatsApp is safe. The fact is that there is no backdoor, and the behavior of WhatsApp is intentional by design and reliable. “Not only does a cybercrook need to know how to fake encryption, but he also needs to bypass well protected login details and SMS authentication. Encryption is only a piece of the puzzle.” However, this is not as easy as it sounds, explains Filip Chytry, threat intelligence director at Avast.

What's the problem with WhatsApp?Īn attacker can theoretically reset the encryption keys, which will allow him to intercept and read messages by putting him in a man-in-the-middle position. The author warned it 'could be used by government agencies as a backdoor to snoop on users who believe their messages to be secure.” This caused quite a stir in security circles, which resulted in a group of cryptography and security experts calling for a retraction and an apology for misleading claims. Last week an article from The Guardian stated that a backdoor within the end-to-end encryption of popular messaging app WhatsApp could be used by governments to snoop on users. News that WhatsApp has a backdoor that governments could use to intercept messages angers crypto experts and confuses users.

Is whatsapp safe for privacy