Comment on Lawsuit Alleges That WhatsApp Has No End-to-End Encryption

• theherk@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  They share it with you. Their public key is generated by them. You encrypt a message to them with their public key. They use their private key to decrypt it.

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  • wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Is that vulnerable to an attack if a hacker gets their public key and intercepts the data traffic? Or can it only be used to encrypt but not decrypt?

    Or are the added layers of complexity designed specifically to prevent that from happening?

    This is why I like open-source, because people who know more about it than I do can check everything over and say whether it’s good.

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    • theherk@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Actually great questions. Yes and no. There are vulnerabilities if the private key leaks, but public keys are just that; perfectly okay public in any hands. You only encrypt data with it.

      What makes the Signal protocol so awesome, and other algorithms like it, is that it reduces the threat surface area further by using onetime keys. So even if your key is leaked, it cannot be used to decrypt old or forthcoming messages as the keys have already ratcheted to the next pair.

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      • wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        That’s so interesting. Data kind of blows my mind. Like, how could all that information travel over wires or through the air and not get mixed up with other information on its way to its destination?

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