WhatsApp active encryption end-to-end: What is it?

Historic announcement that Jan Koum, the CEO of WhatsApp: the company introduced the encryption end-to-end by default on the messaging service, a move that establishes ” the future of personal communications “.

WhatsApp triggered the end-to-end encryption on sent and received messages and phone calls with the latest versions of the messaging client. To proclaim the same company through a note addressed to the audience in which he explains the importance of safety and a message sent on the service within each conversation made with the latest version of the app on both sides. The message sets the activation of the feature in the conversation.

Created by Jan Koum and later acquired by Facebook, WhatsApp is the most popular instant messaging client in the world with over one billion active users. Once the roll-out is very likely that the app Koum become a tool with encryption end-to-end wider world.

The technology used is Signal, formerly known as Axolotl and created by the company Open Whisper Systems Moxie Marlinspike, also adopted from the app eponymous Signal.

In November of 2014, WhatsApp announced that he had begun to use the technology in Signal version of the app for Android, in the next two years the company has worked to distribute encryption technology on iOS and other mobile platforms, expanding them since last Monday also to the group chat data, voice and multimedia attachments calls on both iOS and Android. The end-to-end encryption is now also the option enabled by default.

The user will not actually take any action to enable message security and will be informed by a small notice within each conversation if the same is protected or not: ” Messages you send in this chat, and calls are now protected with end-to-end encryption, ” reads the alert together with an invitation to receive further information on the subject. The company explains on this page the reasons which led it to introduce the default encryption.

” From today we have completed a technological development that makes WhatsApp the leader in protecting private communications: encryption end-to-end, ” the statement said. ” From now on, when you and your contacts use the latest version of every call, every message, every picture, video and voice message, you send will be encrypted end-to-end by default, even in group conversations. The idea at the base of what is simple. ”

” When you send a message to one person or group chat who can read is the person or group that received it. No one else can see inside that message, no one among cyber criminals, hackers, oppressive regimes.

Not even us. The end encryption -to-end makes private conversations on WhatsApp, as if they were face-to-face conversations. ” Definitely suspect the period when Koum and colleagues decided to activate the default feature.

Not much time has passed from the time when Apple rebelled to an order of the FBI about the forced release of the iPhone 5C of the aggressor in the massacre of San Bernardino. Many technology companies supported the apple in the choice not to compromise with the legal authorities in order to protect the privacy of citizens and customers, and the new WhatsApp move is just a first example of the result of the latest innovations in the field information security.

But what is the encryption end-to-end?

So, says WhatsApp implementation he has chosen for the service: ” The end-to-end encryption of WhatsApp is available when you and recipients of your messages using the latest versions of our application. Many applications encrypt messaging between you and them, while the end-to-end encryption of WhatsApp ensures that only you and the person, you are communicating with can read what is sent, and that there is no one in the middle, even WhatsApp.

This is because the messages are secured with a padlock, and only you and your recipient have the special key needed to unlock them and read them. For added protection, each message has its own lock and its own unique key. All of this happens automatically: you do not need to activate any settings or create the special secret chat to protect ” messages.

The end-to-end encryption is one of the most effective protections when it comes to an exchange of data takes place on the internet or on a network. With the word end-to-end, it specifies that the protection is working comprehensively on the whole route of communication: in the case of WhatsApp after mailing, calling, file, until receipt by the consignee.

Any single data is protected with a different encryption key that only the sender client and the recipient know, and cannot be deciphered if not by the two clients involved in the communication. In theory, no one can access the content of the message.

The practice is a little different: experience shows us, as in the recent case of Apple and the FBI, that even the strongest protection can be circumvented, even if coercive methods and extremely advanced.

Nevertheless, the novelty of WhatsApp is undoubtedly very positive, since the most famous messaging client to date offers the best protection available and is an example for many other minor services that do not even use them: ” WhatsApp is among the few communications platforms that have developed a complete end-to-end encryption turned on by default for every action you make in the service, ” says the company. ” And we expect that this will be the future of personal communication. ”

” I grew up in the USSR during the communist regime, and one of the reasons why my family moved to the United States is because there people could not speak freely, ” writes Jan Koum. ”

But now more than a billion people use WhatsApp to stay in touch with friends and family around the world. And now every single person among them may do so freely and safely on WhatsApp “.