Whatsapp is going to bring an end to end encryption for the cloud backup, as revealed by Mark Zuckerberg in his recent post on Facebook. The feature will be offering both the security and privacy in the cloud backup.
Facts
Whatsapp is now going to bring End to end encryption cloud backup very soon in the market. End to end encryption cloud backup will be going to be released as an optional feature. It is a new feature that is going to protect the chat backup of users and give them strong security as well as privacy from any third party attacks.
No Third-Party Intrusion
As WhatsApp has been offering end-to-end encryption (E2EE) in messages since 2016, this new latest recent update is much-needed growth for the company. It will bring much-needed security features for the users in backing up their private chat and data via an end to end encrypted backup to the cloud-like Google Drive. The feature is password protected as well. With the help of an end to end encryption, no third parties can look into the user’s private Whatsapp data backup even if the backup is created or stored in Google Drive or iCloud.
Adding a new layer to the user’s privacy and security
The CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, has informed in his recent Facebook post. He shared –
“We’re adding another layer of privacy and security to WhatsApp: an end-to-end encryption option for the backups people choose to store in Google Drive or iCloud. WhatsApp is the first global messaging service at this scale to offer end-to-end encrypted messaging and backups, and getting there was a really hard technical challenge that required an entirely new framework for key storage and cloud storage across operating systems.”
WhatsApp global chief executive officer, Will Cathcart took to Twitter to say, “This has been years in the making. We’re taking advantage of development in hardware storage to safely store your backup encryption key in a vault no one else can access. We’re providing options to remember a 64-bit key or choose a password we do not know and cannot access. Neither can Apple or Google.”
This new backup encryption brings on a brand new coating of security, protection and privacy for Whatsapp users. This coating will soon be in working and will be adding more thickness to the security and privacy of users.
An Optional Feature
This new feature is an optional feature. It will be offered as an option to which users will going to have permit manually on the chat messaging application, Whatsapp. It is going to be available for both iOS and Android users in the upcoming weeks, as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed in a blog post.
Password Protection
This secured coating of privacy is to be permitted via password by the users on Whatsapp. The users have to create a password while enabling end to end encryption cloud backup. The password needs to be highly remembered by the users; it will be unknown to Whatsapp. Both users would be able to recover the data in case the device is either lost or stolen; there is an option for recovering through the hardware security module (HSM) backup key vault. HSM carries out several encrypted password verification attempts and making it persistently inaccessible on the multiple unsuccessful attempts to access it.
“This security measures provide protection against brute force attempts to retrieve the key,” says Mark Zuckerberg. If the user uses a 64-bit encryption key, they have to remember it correctly; this key is not sent to the HSM backup vault key.
End-to-End Encryption Backup Alike Messages
This end to end encryption backup will be going to be working a like end to end encrypted messages security. This end to end encryption will be protecting chat messages as well as videos and photos.
Furthermore, Whatsapp will also going to duplicate your key five times, storing each and every copy in five different data centres across the several geographies, effectively ensuring that if one data centre suffers an outage, you can still access your chat history.
Although Whatsapp latest privacy and security measure is welcome, concerns still swirl over the kind of information it shares with Facebook and Facebook’s third-party companies – specifically relating to the metadata it collects.
Some other messaging applications like Signal, for instance, have entirely circumvented the issue of users chats becoming compromised by not storing any of them on cloud backups at all. Moreover, for those insistent on having a secure and safe backup of their chats, Whatsapp represents the best option.
