WhatsApp chats are end-to-end encrypted, as per Facebook. End-to-end encryption means that no one apart from the sender and receiver can read the messages, not even WhatsApp.
So despite such security, why is it that every time there is a Bollywood scandal, the WhatsApp chats of the person involve are leak and accessed?
As there have been too many cases of WhatsApp chats of Bollywood celebrities leaking.
Let it be WhatsApp chats belonging to actress Rhea Chakraborty were circulate all over the internet.
Then Deepika Padukone heading to the NCB office after her chats with an alleged drug dealer were accesse.
The latest case involves Bollywood actress Ananya Pandey, who was summone by the NCB after her chats with Aryan Khan, son of Shah Rukh Khan, were allegedly reveale to the authorities.
All these cases make you question whether WhatsApp messages are really end-to-end encrypted?
Lets Find the Answer.
WhatsApp is End-to-End Encrypted?
WhatsApp has always maintain that all its messages are end-to-end encrypted.
The WhatsApp messages can only be read by the sender and the receiver and no third person can gain access to them, not even WhatsApp and Facebook.
WhatsApp’s end-to-end encryption uses a Signal Protocol which keeps the third parties and WhatsApp itself from having access to messages or calls.
As per WhatsApp’s FAQ Page :
“WhatsApp has no ability to see the content of messages or listen to calls that are end-to-end encrypted. That’s because the encryption and decryption of messages sent and received on WhatsApp occur entirely on your device. Before a message ever leaves your device, it’s secure with a cryptographic lock, and only the recipient has the keys. In addition, the keys change with every single message that’s sent. While all of this happens behind the scenes, you can confirm your conversations are protect by checking the security verification code on your device,”.
How can WhatsApp chats be accesse even when they are End-to-End Encryption?
End-to-end encryption is near impossible.
So question arises how do WhatsApp chats leak?
The answer is that they don’t. Instead, they are accesse.
And this access happens simply with Unlock your phone and give it to someone.
In India law around the access of personal devices like smartphones is not clear.
In the US or many European countries cops require warrant before they can seize and search phones and computers.
There are many Scenarios :
- The phone is physically accesse and the user is tell to unlock it.
- When unlocked, all chats are accessible.
- Screenshots can be copy or they can be share also.
- The phone is physically accesse but it is not unlock.
- In this case the forensics teams can do some of their trick.
- WhatsApp chats are encrypt but until a couple of weeks ago the Chat Backups that WhatsApp was making to Google Drive or iCloud were not encrypt.
- These chat backups could be accesse using some specialised tools.
Let understand by an example, when someone has the phone, data on it could be clone to a computer and then could be accesse using forensic tools.
- There is an option available to law enforcement agencies to approach Google and Apple with a valid court order and get the WhatsApp chat backups from them.
- These backups then can be taken apart in forensic labs.
Even now when the chat backups can be encrypte the option has to be enable by the user.
Unless untill you explicitly tell WhatsApp to encrypt your chat backups, they will still be in unencrypt form.
Law enforcement authorities can contact WhatsApp to share the account records of a user in emergency situations.
The store contents of any account may include “about” information, profile photos, group information and address book, if available.
When a request is place, WhatsApp carefully reviews, validate and respond to law enforcement requests base on applicable law and policy.
Nowhere does the FAQ page of WhatsApp states that the messaging app shares the message content with the law enforcement authorities.
It is because WhatsApp does not store messages once they are deliver or transaction logs of such deliver messages.
The undeliver messages are delete from WhatsApp servers after 30 days.
The end-to-end encryption, which is activate by default, does not allow WhatsApp to access the chats of its users.
THANK YOU FOR READING.
