Belgium Arrests Two in Probe Over Returning Syria Fighter

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-08/belgium-arrests-16-in-terror-raid-triggered-by-whatsapp-messages

by Errorcod3 • 11 years ago

76 54 11 years ago

bloomberg.com

caminante• 11 years ago

Though, does this mean that the encryption was compromised?

jhallenworld• 11 years ago

Even with encryption they can probably track who you're communicating with.

Perhaps they pushed an insecure version on the suspects.

solarexplorer2• 11 years ago

AFAIK end-to-end encryption can only be used with Android clients.

http://www.heise.de/ct/artikel/Keeping-Tabs-on-WhatsApp-s-En...

tl;dr end-to-end encryption in WhatsApp is not really useful (yet)

zeeed• 11 years ago

which, if you rely on it, defeats at least one "end" in "end-to-end" if you don't know what device your peer is using. So much for end-to-end encryption in Whatsapp...

morganvachon5• 11 years ago

That's exactly what I was thinking. If WhatsApp was an Android-only app, it might be able to claim end-to-end security. Even then a quirk in a certain version of Android on one end, or even a hardware quirk with a certain model phone, could impact security.

Of course if you want the most secure communication possible with someone, you won't use a smartphone in the first place. There isn't a cellphone on the planet that's 100% secure from eavesdropping.

jokr0042• 11 years ago

I've never used Whatsapp, but maybe they inform you whether or not the other end supports and is using encryption? It would certainly be easy for them to do something like that, hopefully they do.

mapgrep• 11 years ago

"In its initial phase, though, Whatsapp’s messaging encryption is limited to Android, and doesn’t yet apply to group messages, photos or video messages. " http://www.wired.com/2014/11/whatsapp-encrypted-messaging/

phreeza• 11 years ago

Seems very unwise of them to disclose this capability, if it exists. Might be a red herring? Or maybe an accidental disclosure through due to belgian/US miscommunication.

briandear• 11 years ago

From an intelligence perspective this was profoundly dumb to reveal. This is the heart of what protecting sources and methods is all about. However, it really should go without saying that one should operate in the assumption that all digital communications are compromised, at least commercial services.

nly• 11 years ago

As much as I like and respect Moxie, I think it's a huge personal risk for him to associate himself with Facebook (WhatsApp)[0].

That said, come on... there's no user exposed key management in Whatsapp, or secure means to perform a handshake with your contacts. Even if they've really rolled out Moxies crypto protocol on Android, like they claim (go look at the source and verify... oh, wait), on features alone you can't trust it... you just can't create a secure channel unless you're in control of the keys.

And on terrorists using Whatsapp... well, Whatsapp accounts are tied to your cell phone #. The authorities can work with WhatsApp to piece together who messaged who, and when, and where you both physically were at the time. This is enough to bust terrorists. Deploying E-to-E crypto was never about anonymity.

[0] https://whispersystems.org/blog/whatsapp/

dsjoerg2• 11 years ago

Maybe you missed this — when end-to-end encryption was launched, they mentioned that they did not yet encrypt iOS, nor group chat.

https://whispersystems.org/blog/whatsapp/

Did they make a subsequent announcement that they were encrypting those?

higherpurpose• 11 years ago

Who's they? Because Whatsapp has never said it uses end to end encryption - anywhere.

Also, I guess it is possible that the so called terrorists used iPhones, but I think there's a higher chance they used Android phones. Of course we don't know exactly, but either way you shouldn't have assumed Whatsapp uses end-to-end encryption even before this.

So those who thought Whatsapp was "safe", treat this as yet another warning sign that you shouldn't be using it for private conversations.

Those who were already paranoid about it, you probably weren't using it already for that, so this changes nothing.

toong2• 11 years ago

Why do you think it's more likely they used Android phones ?

As of May 2015, iOS has 53.5% of the mobile market Android 41.7% (in Belgium) - source: http://howwebrowse.be/

morganvachon5• 11 years ago

Because Whatsapp has never said it uses end to end encryption - anywhere.

They most certainly did:

http://www.wired.com/2014/11/whatsapp-encrypted-messaging/

dsjoerg2• 11 years ago

Because Whatsapp has never said it uses end to end encryption - anywhere.

Good point, thanks

simonvc• 11 years ago

Even if you do you use an app that always uses crypto end to end (e.g. signal/textsecure)

https://whispersystems.org/blog/signal/

There's no guarantee that apple/google/microsoft haven't been ordered to install a backdoored version.

tl;dr RMS was right

dogma11382• 11 years ago

It's by far easier to force MSFT, Google or Apple to backdoor the device rather than an individual app. Especially since at least on Android devices you can always pull the APK you got form the store apart and see if it's being messed with.

tptacek5• 11 years ago

You're not supposed to do this with story titles.

The correct title for this story would be "Belgium Arrests Two in Probe Over Returning Syria Fighter".

roryhughes• 11 years ago

Yeah but OP is trying to point out a specific piece of information that's relevant for hacker news users. It wouldn't have been read through otherwise.

shepardrtc• 11 years ago

OP has no information other than that Whatsapp was used. The title is not appropriate.

flurdy• 11 years ago

Unfortunately that title would not be very descriptive why the story is relevant on Hacker News.

jokr0042• 11 years ago

To be fair, that doesn't shed any light on what the submitter is trying to point out.

morganvachon5• 11 years ago

I think in this particular case the story title applies. The part of the story that is interesting/important to HN users is about WhatsApp's compromised encryption, not so much the arrest and charges. Perhaps a nod to the article's title would be better though; something like "Suspects Arrested in Probe Based On WhatsApp Eavesdropping". That covers both aspects of the story.

tptacek5• 11 years ago

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=author:dang%20editorialize&sor...

sehugg2• 11 years ago

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bury_the_lede

tootie• 11 years ago

Arresting terrorists operating in Belgium isn't a good enough lede?

oskarth2• 11 years ago

Nonsense. The spirit of the guidelines is what matters. That post would never get on the front page of HN, and the current title is far from clickbait - it's the very reason it's of interest to the community.

EDIT: For reference, the original title was something to the effect of WhatsApp - so much for end-to-end encryption.

tptacek5• 11 years ago

Then they should write a story about it, because Bloomberg did not write the story their title claims they wrote.

Errorcod3• 11 years ago

Mod FTFY

and note taken

Crito• 11 years ago

It is a failing of a vote-based ranking system that a comment with nothing but a complaint about the HN title remains at the top of the discussion, after the title has been corrected (http://i.imgur.com/fItX7pd.png).

Perhaps moderators should take the time to cull/derank these comments when they fix the titles.

tptacek5• 11 years ago

I agree.

dogma11382• 11 years ago

As many have pointed out Whats App's E2EE isn't deployed on all platforms and messaging services.

Furthermore they've only rolled it out about 6 months ago, there's a good chance that the information which lead to this case was collected before the E2E encryption was rolled out.

sehugg2• 11 years ago

FWIW this is an article with a headline closer to the original, though with no additional information:

http://www.businessinsider.com/whatsapp-may-have-gotten-16-a...

comrade1• 11 years ago

Of course this turns into a debate about the article title on HN...

speculation• 11 years ago

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/06/us_identifies...

In the comments on this unrelated story of identifying a terrorist people argued that it's possible the story is deliberate misinformation, it could also be the case here.

late2part2• 11 years ago

To what end? To encourage Terrorists to use another mechanism, almost certainly better vetted?

kbart• 11 years ago

I find it funny that somebody could be really so naive to expect privacy from WhatsApp after it got acquired by Facebook. Especially after we've had similar lessons with Skype + Microsoft.

late2part2• 11 years ago

It's called "Consumer Marketing of Encryption."

Almost certainly Whatsapp is doing consumer to server encryption, but not end to end. If this is true, then Whatsapp holds or can decrypt the internal storage or transfer of messages.

Alternatively, there is a likelihood that the encryption keys are escrowed or trivially encrypted.

This is what we're seeing in the consolidating web giant world. Words don't match technical expectations, but they meet the letter of the law. We see/saw the same thing with privacy.

Belgium Arrests Two in Probe Over Returning Syria Fighter

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