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by antonvs 147 days ago
It's not entirely accurate to say "any party other than the sender and the intended receiver," since the messaging app running on the user's device can read the messages. Something like "any third party (other than the app vendor)" would be more accurate. Without actually analyze app behavior, it comes down to trusting that the vendor doesn't do anything nefarious.
3 comments
londons_explore 147 days ago
One could imagine a design where even the app vendor is untrusted... You would send an encrypted chunk direct to the GPU, which would then decrypt and render the message text in some secure environment onto the screen.

Neither the OS nor the application would know the contents of your message beyond "it's 500x700 pixels".

Similar things are done for DRM video, and widevine level 1 or 2 haven't seen many breaches despite running on a wide array of hardware open to physical attack.

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antonvs 147 days ago
Oh it's definitely possible. The (dis)incentives tend to be strongly against such secure systems, though.
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londons_explore 146 days ago
In the messaging game, there is every incentive to be seen as the secure-est one.

If you can have an e2e chat between two iphones locked in a big glass box with a sign that says "Anyone who can hack into this conversation gets $100M", that's a really good marketing campaign.

If you can make the app use secure enclaves or whatever to take the ~100k people who write the source code of the libraries, app and OS out of the attack surface, that $100M becomes much safer.

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Fripplebubby 147 days ago
I think the draft covers this well: https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-knodel-e2ee-definition...
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antonvs 146 days ago
Technical drafts will tend to get this right, where the communication often breaks down is how it's communicated to users.
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rvnx 147 days ago
As far as I remember, Google does the final signing of the APK, which is eventually the signature verified by the OS to verify if an update is valid or not.

So Google can, if ordered or willing to help, create a new release track (e.g. experimental-do-not-deleted) and add specific e-mails to that track with the "improved" version.

Nobody would be able to see that in real world, and you know what, if WhatsApp themselves are ordered, they can also create their own "test" track, it's just less covert but it would technically be working.

In all cases, Google and Apple have to respect US laws, and the laws of earning money too.

If you do not cooperative with intelligence / police services of your country, only bad things can happen.

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mr_mitm 147 days ago
Yes, the app could be compromised, or the OS, or the compiler of the app, or of the OS, or the OS of the compiler, or the CPU any of these things run on, etc. etc. None of that is relevant to the definition of E2EE.
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antonvs 146 days ago
It's relevant to how E2EE is described to users. Representing that it's not possible for anyone other than the sender or recipient to read messages is misleading and just incorrect in general.

A particularly relevant point is when it comes to government interception. E.g. it would be perfectly possible for an messaging app to have a "wiretap mode" that the vendor enables for users that are the subject of a relevant warrant.

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