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WhatsApp & telegram security flaws



Both companies pride themselves in having state of the art encryption systems and ensure their users that the communication between each other is secure and no man in the middle attack will happen.


Sadly enough this was put to test and several security companies have opposed to these after finding loop holes in these encryption systems

WhatsApp has the ability to force the generation of new encryption keys for offline users, unbeknown to the sender and recipient of the messages, and to make the sender re-encrypt messages with new keys and send them again for any messages that have not been marked as delivered.


The recipient is not made aware of this change in encryption, while the sender is only notified if they have opted-in to encryption warnings in settings, and only after the messages have been re-sent. This re-encryption and rebroadcasting effectively allows WhatsApp to intercept and read users' messages.

This loop hole discovered by a security researcher in the University of California is he continued to say that if WhatsApp is asked by the government to surrender its data this is what it would do.


The vulnerability is not inherent to the Signal protocol. Open Whisper Systems’ messaging app, Signal, the app used and recommended by whistleblower Edward Snowden, does not suffer from the same vulnerability. If a recipient changes the security key while offline, for instance, a sent message 
will fail to be delivered and the sender will be notified of the change in security keys without automatically resending the message.

Telegram is also reported to also be suffering from the same flaws.


This brings into question the integrity of the systems that we use and vendors claim to be secure. As a security expert it goes without saying that we can never be 100% secure but either way it’s good to reduce and minimize the risks.

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