Whatsapp starts rolling out end-to-end encryption for backups – IT Pro – News

Well it depends. This is probably true for 99% of people. The message backup was already encrypted anyway, although WhatsApp keeps the key. (Cloud has your encrypted database but no key and WhatsApp has the key but no database, it is very secure.) The media was not.

Now you have the option to encrypt both messages and attachments. This wasn’t possible before, making plaintext media access available to your cloud service provider. (Apple or Google). So with this function a.) absolutely everything is encrypted not just messages, and b.) you can save the key yourself or store a key securely in HKM from FB allowing backups to be decrypted if you have access to both the cloud and the decrypted as well to the phone number (or WhatsApp sends a court order). WhatsApp no ​​longer has a key that they can access. (Definitely not if you choose to store it yourself and keep it safe.)

So it’s really a huge improvement and offers much better (privacy) protection, but most people will probably already have enough of the normal backup mode and also trust Google and Apple enough not to find that necessary or they would be interested. everyone. However, offering this functionality is very important, so there is something for everyone, and therefore you can opt for additional security.

Due to the fact that attachments for cloud providers can be accessed in plain text, I preferred not to backup to the cloud and did everything locally. (Despite the fact that I don’t have any weird stuff or anything, it doesn’t matter to them at all. Not even pictures of what I ate yesterday or PDFs with a cake recipe. And certainly not commercial documents.) Using this function, I can again think in iCloud.

[Reactie gewijzigd door WhatsappHack op 14 oktober 2021 23:41]