Ali, as you noted, The Guardian decided to go with the catchphrase. Asking the right questions would have been boring but who has time for boring studies when you can attack Facebook/WhatsApp and get the spotlight? :) Security is hard and no one person/organization can get it 100%. It is more practical to live with systems that can fail well by being transparent on vulnerabilities and being proactive with patching them. M On 14/01/2017 13:21, Ali Hussein wrote:
Moses
Thanks for sharing. I personally considered the Guardian story and then read the Open Whispers System blog and came to the conclusion that it just may be possible that the Guardian Newspaper in this case was really dabbling in sensationalism.
I'm keen to hear comments from listers who have a deeper understanding of cryptography.
Meanwhile in all things tech and social the best defense against snooping and hacking is simply this:-
Exercise caution. Don't write or post anything that may embarrass you if someone hacked into any of your devices.
This may be an opportunity for those who have gotten into the habit of engaging in an online relationship to actually go out and meet..You know...like we used to do in the 1980s and before..
You may just find it super fulfilling...in more ways than one.. :-)
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On 14 Jan 2017, at 8:24 AM, Moses Karanja via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke <mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> wrote:
Open Whispers response to The Guardian article, maintaining it is not a backdoor:
The only question it might be reasonable to ask is whether these safety number change notifications should be "blocking" or "non-blocking." In other words, when a contact's key changes, should WhatsApp require the user to manually verify the new key before continuing, or should WhatsApp display an advisory notification and continue without blocking the user.
https://whispersystems.org/blog/there-is-no-whatsapp-backdoor/
Moses
On 13/01/2017 21:43, kictanet-request@lists.kictanet.or.ke wrote:
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