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Some more background:

This was presented in the lightning talks at 33c3, starting around minute 48: https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-8089-lightning_talks_day_4

Here's the congress wiki with some more links: https://events.ccc.de/congress/2016/wiki/Lightning:A_Backdoo...

And a blogpost: https://tobi.rocks/2016/04/whats-app-retransmission-vulnerab...

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Thank you. The last link should be the source (a note to moderator).

It's news that Facebook still hasn't fixed it (and they're saying they won't fix it).

What do you call a known vulnerability that can be used for eavesdropping that a company refuses to fix ?

1) A mistake

2) A bug

3) A backdoor

4) A deliberate UX trade-off that, while clearly suboptimal for the kind of people who read HN, still leaves WhatsApp's massive base of everyday users in a much better position than they were prior to integrating the Signal protocol: immune to the more mundane threats of passive mass surveillance and the exfiltration of message history from Facebook's servers.

Nicely put. Anyone that is so shocked, shocked about this is well advised to install Signal, Threema, Wire, and furthermore employ defence in depth.

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