<story><title>NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at U.S. allies</title><url>https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-cyber-whatsapp-nsogroup/exclusive-whatsapp-hacked-to-spy-on-top-government-officials-at-u-s-allies-sources-idUSKBN1XA27H</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>vocatus_gate</author><text>A buddy of mine is Special Forces (U.S.). He said JSOC recently banned use of WhatsApp and encouraged everyone to switch to the open-source Signal (another encrypted messaging app). Allegedly WhatsApp uses Signal&amp;#x27;s encryption (OpenWhisper) but I stopped trusting it the second Facebook bought them out.</text></item><item><author>milofeynman</author><text>The article doesn&amp;#x27;t really say what hackers had access to, but it sounds like they had full control over their phones. There is a lot bigger story here and I&amp;#x27;d love to read a post-mortem in a few months.&lt;p&gt;Also, WhatsApp is such an obvious target for a state actor. I saw several articles of the last year that mentioned Jared Kushner using Whatsapp so I assume a lot of government folks use it for off the books &amp;quot;encrypted&amp;quot; communication.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>e12e</author><text>&amp;gt; Allegedly WhatsApp uses Signal&amp;#x27;s encryption (OpenWhisper&lt;p&gt;About the partnership:
&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;signal.org&amp;#x2F;blog&amp;#x2F;whatsapp-complete&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;signal.org&amp;#x2F;blog&amp;#x2F;whatsapp-complete&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;But of course, in this case the issue seems to be either compromise of the device(s) via zero days, whatsapp usage simply being the target matrix - and&amp;#x2F;or a leveraging a zero day in whatsapp for full device compromise.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s unlikely signal would be immune - they didn&amp;#x27;t Crack the encryption, they cracked the app&amp;#x2F;os.&lt;p&gt;In olden times the vector might have been a font, or a gif.&lt;p&gt;The only advantage signal has is a conservative interface and small userbase. I&amp;#x27;m not sure if they do some kind of hard-line whitelisting of attachments though - if you can pack an exploit as a file, I&amp;#x27;m pretty sure you could send it via signal.</text></comment>
<story><title>NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at U.S. allies</title><url>https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-cyber-whatsapp-nsogroup/exclusive-whatsapp-hacked-to-spy-on-top-government-officials-at-u-s-allies-sources-idUSKBN1XA27H</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>vocatus_gate</author><text>A buddy of mine is Special Forces (U.S.). He said JSOC recently banned use of WhatsApp and encouraged everyone to switch to the open-source Signal (another encrypted messaging app). Allegedly WhatsApp uses Signal&amp;#x27;s encryption (OpenWhisper) but I stopped trusting it the second Facebook bought them out.</text></item><item><author>milofeynman</author><text>The article doesn&amp;#x27;t really say what hackers had access to, but it sounds like they had full control over their phones. There is a lot bigger story here and I&amp;#x27;d love to read a post-mortem in a few months.&lt;p&gt;Also, WhatsApp is such an obvious target for a state actor. I saw several articles of the last year that mentioned Jared Kushner using Whatsapp so I assume a lot of government folks use it for off the books &amp;quot;encrypted&amp;quot; communication.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>chriselles</author><text>Approx 20 months ago, numerous people I had contact with working in western military special operations units dropped WhatsApp in a fairly brief period of time.</text></comment>