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Using a secret key only the administrator possesses to sign those invitations could let the admin prove his or her identity and prevent the spoofed invites, locking out uninvited guests. The researchers say Threema responded to their findings with a fix in an earlier version of its software.Īs for WhatsApp, the researchers write that the company could fix its more egregious group chat flaw by adding an authentication mechanism for new group invitations.
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Open Whisper Systems declined to comment on the record to WIRED about the Ruhr researchers' findings.įor Threema, the researchers found even smaller bugs: An attacker who controls the server can replay messages or add users back into a group who have been removed. The researchers say that Open Whisper Systems, the non-profit that runs and maintains Signal, nonetheless responded to their work, saying that it's currently redesigning how Signal handles group messaging. That essentially blocks the attack, unless the Group ID can be obtained from one of the group member's phones-in which case the group is likely already compromised. But in Signal's case, that eavesdropper would have to not only control the Signal server, but also know a virtually unguessable number called the Group ID.
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They warn that Signal allows the same group chat attack as WhatsApp, letting uninvited eavesdroppers join groups. The researchers dug up less serious flaws in the more specialized secure messaging apps Signal and Threema, too. "That's like leaving the front door of a bank unlocked and then saying no one will rob it because there’s a security camera," Green says. But that possibility of detection isn't an adequate solution to WhatsApp's underlying problem, argues John Hopkins' Green. Sooner or later, users would likely notice that unexpected strangers were showing up in their chats. To be fair, this technique wouldn't be a very stealthy strategy in the long run for government spying. It's why we collect very little information and all messages sent on WhatsApp are end-to-end encrypted.” The privacy and security of our users is incredibly important to WhatsApp.
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We built WhatsApp so group messages cannot be sent to a hidden user. "Existing members are notified when new people are added to a WhatsApp group. “We've looked at this issue carefully," a WhatsApp spokesperson wrote in an email. And the WhatsApp spokesperson also noted that preventing the Ruhr University researchers' attack would likely break a popular WhatsApp feature known as a "group invite link" that allows anyone to join a group simply by clicking on a URL. The staffer added that if an administrator spots a fishy new addition to a group, they can always tell other users via another group, or in one-to-one messages. In a phone call with WIRED, a WhatsApp spokesperson confirmed the researchers' findings, but emphasized that no one can secretly add a new member to a group-a notification does go through that a new, unknown member has joined the group. The team argues their findings undermine each app's security claims for multi-person group conversations to varying degrees.īut while the Signal and Threema flaws they found were relatively harmless, the researchers unearthed far more significant gaps in WhatsApp's security: They say that anyone who controls WhatsApp's servers could effortlessly insert new people into an otherwise private group, even without the permission of the administrator who ostensibly controls access to that conversation.
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And according to new research from one team of German cryptographers, flaws in WhatsApp make infiltrating the app's group chats much easier than ought to be possible.Īt the Real World Crypto security conference Wednesday in Zurich, Switzerland, a group of researchers from the Ruhr University Bochum in Germany plan to describe a series of flaws in encrypted messaging apps including WhatsApp, Signal, and Threema. But one of the tricky elements of encryption-and even trickier in a group chat setting-has always been ensuring that a secure conversation reaches only the intended audience, rather than some impostor or infiltrator. When WhatsApp added end-to-end encryption to every conversation for its billion users two years ago, the mobile messaging giant significantly raised the bar for the privacy of digital communications worldwide.