The headline in the Guardian last week was certainly eye-catching: “WhatsApp vulnerability allows snooping on encrypted messages.” The allegation was that a newly discovered flaw could allow messages you’d sent to a known and confirmed party through a highly secure method could be replayed, or sent again to other parties that could insert themselves as trusted recipients.
It turns out, almost none of this is accurate or represented in a way that will help WhatsApp users improve their security. This doesn’t mean that WhatsApp is created perfectly (nor do I allege the Guardian have an agenda). A few months ago, I explained how to configure WhatsApp to be as secure as possible, because defaults and prompts made it more likely that you could have your messages intercepted by criminals or by mass or targeted surveillance from security agencies. For example, the app encourages you to backup your messages on a server, which removes the end-to-end encryption protection of the messaging system; you have to know to say no.
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