Encryption Backdoors: Why The Government Shouldn't Break WhatsApp [The Basics - S01E01]

Encryption backdoors - breaking WhatsApp and iMessage's security to let the government stop Bad Things - sounds like a reasonable idea. Here's why it isn't.

WhatsApp and iMessage aren’t open source, in theory they could steal your private key as well or quietly issue a fake one to someone and sit in the middle listening, but in practice people would notice.

Sure, there are small loopholes that could work in particular circumstances, but the odds are remote, and security researchers are already decompiling and tearing apart every version of every messenger program just to see if someone’s put a backdoor into it.

If any of these apps get served with a government warrant right now, the most they could do is say how much two people have been talking, and maybe roughly where they were: but never what they were talking about. More than that is literally, mathematically impossible. But it’s impossible only because of the way they’ve designed their systems. And that is the vulnerability.

(by: Tom Scott)