Over WhatsApp, all encryption in our chat – The Republic

WhatsApp is only the latest arrival. Now we will find herself in the task list that have adopted encryption end-to-end, that is the technique which obscure our messages and our calls from the sender to the recipient, making them visible only to the two who are talking. And not to others or to the same company that provides the service. An outlet for the encryption position is doubly noise: not only because the announcement comes after the controversy that saw Apple take sides against the FBI that eventually made it known to be able to unlock the iPhone 5C of the aggressor San Bernardino, without the help of Cupertino. But also because it is in fact the first time that this form of security becomes mainstream : Default reaching one billion users who are using the latest version of messaging available for iOS and Android bought by Mark Zuckerberg for $ 19 billion, of which four and fifteen in cash in shares. “Encryption is a luxury,” he denounced in recent days on the website of the US magazine The Atlantic the journalist Kaveh Waddell , pointing the finger at the poor level of in the privacy of smartphones with Google’s operating system, so the least expensive and most common among the poorer sections of the population. “Encryption: human rights issue,” was the appeal made a few weeks ago by Amnesty International. From today the situation seems to have improved.

Yet WhatsApp was definitely not the first and it is certainly not the only one to protect the privacy of its members. There are now many apps to chat adopting encryption end-to-end. It shows a chart of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, or the International rganization engaged in the protection of digital rights. First of all we have to mention the systems that Apple is the Blackberry make available to those with their smart phones. It is, respectively, iMessage and BlackBerry Protected, used even by Barack Obama in the entertainment smartphone. While one of the most popular alternatives, available on Google Play and the Apple Store, you Signal: become famous because of Edward Snowden , the whistleblower case Nsa, who was testimonial. App easy to use, which is based on the same protocol now implemented by Facebook rib: TextSecure. To develop is Open Whisper Systems, a nonprofit software group, founded in January 2013 by the researcher Moxie Marlinspike . With the aim of “making the simple private communications as a phone call.” What is the difference from the app to Zuckerberg’s property? “In the case of WhatsApp, it’s a closed source client. And its safety depends on the implementation,” says Luca Carettoni , a computer security expert. “Therefore, even if the protocol is deemed safe, the way you use it is important because it may represent the weak link in the

A separate section is up to Telegram. Because from the beginning of their professional history Brothers Nikolai and Pavel Durov have made the protection of privacy on their workhorse, allowing them to climb quickly the ranking of the most used messaging app. Although it must be said that in this case the end-to-end encryption is not available by default, but must be activated manually by selecting the “secret chat” option. And again there are Silent Phone and Silent Text, two app for calls and messages that can be downloaded for free to exploit them even have to pay a monthly subscription, behind which there is the creator of PGP encryption Philip Zimmerman; there Wickr where for each message you can select the timer for self-destruction; and the web app CryptoCat Nadim Kobeissi , encryption researcher applied the French Institute for computer science research and Automation (Inria). A distinction to be made within this panoply signals this Stefano Zanero , an associate professor in the Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering of the Politecnico di Milano. And that is, between the closed systems and “those that allow you to see the source code, which are preferable because then other people can analyze it. At the moment, among the best known, only Signal and partly Telegram do.”
After
new choice of WhatsApp, albeit late, remain few signatures of excellent services that still do not adopt the end-to-end encryption: Facebook Messenger, Google Hangouts, Yahoo !, Snapchat, Viber and Skype. Sure, it’s a signal and an important step in the direction of greater protection for users. Although it is not the panacea for all ills. “It must be remembered that the protection of the given ‘in transit’ is only one component of an overall security strategy, and that the encryption of itself is not able to guarantee the absolute security of communications,” he says messages Andrea Zapparoli Manzoni , a member of the Clusit, the Italian association for information security. “There are two other important elements to consider: the safety of the device (fixed or mobile) which runs on the application and the safety of the same. To them there are real threats, which are in no way mitigated by the adoption of encryption on the transmission channel “. You risk a digital arms race, by crackers and government spies, and it is good to already start thinking about it.

topics:

whatsapp

whatsapp facebook

encryption

telegram

security

end-to-emd

Starring:

Andrea Zapparoli Manzoni

Stefano Zanero

Luca Carettoni

Marlinspike moxie

Philip Zimmerman

Kaveh Waddell

Edward Snowden

Pavel Durov

Nadim Kobeissi