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Comment by baynoob | Hacker News Reader

I don't think anyone can whatsapp chat. Somehow, whats app is the most reliable end-to-end encrypted messaging service today and many just don't know.

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WhatsApp is closed source. For what it's worth, the protocol itself might be impenetrable, but the client itself has access to your decrypted messages and can still decide to send them back to Facebook without your knowledge.

The system that depends on a good will and "trust me bro" is not secure by default, even if Meta/Facebook were the most trustworthy company in the world under the most honest legislation.

Open vs. closed source is a completely moot point in the context of iOS and Android if your threat model includes vendor/supply chain attacks.

If you have reproducible builds and you can verify the digest of the app on your phone, difference is like night and day in open-source vs. closed-source projects.

But you can’t have reproducible builds at least in the App Store.

Apple can implement to show pre-encrypt hash if they want. I cannot see anything negative impact for them if we just give some pressure.

Oh, don't get me wrong, I think it would be phenomenal if Apple were to allow reproducible builds on the App Store!

But given both the existing encryption as you mention, and Bitcode (mandatory for at least the Apple Watch for now), I think it's unfortunately pretty unlikely to happen.

Software can be reverse engineered even if it doesn't have source available (and WhatsApp has been extensively reverse engineered). Similarly, software might be impractical to audit even if it does have source available.

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