Project paper and PowerPoint presentation

Security of WhatsApp 1

Christophe Bassono

Summer: Cryptography

Project Proposal

5/21/19

Security of WhatsApp

WhatsApp is an extremely popular mobile messaging service which has over one billion users.

The new feature has been introduced by WhatsApp that messages are the end to end encrypted

which means that no third party can read or hack our messages. Conversation remains between

sender and receiver no one is able to hack other private messages. The photos we send to each

other also end to end encrypted which can only be seen by sender and receiver. WhatsApp now

secures every single call, message, picture, and video we send to others are totally encrypted. It's

mean no third party like police, hackers, and governments can read the messages. Not even

WhatsApp have access to messages, calls, and videos. Super technology has been used to protect

the application. Today WhatsApp has become compulsory in daily life, everyone is using

WhatsApp to share messages and pictures. It has become important in study related works. But in

many countries agencies require to have access to messages and calls to uncover terrorists’ illegal

activities. Agencies can be given the code to have access to messages and calls. WhatsApp has

made easy to connect it with computers which requires a password and code scanning process

every device has its own code no other person can hack it. So it means our messages and phone

calls are the end to end encrypted. WhatsApp also uses part of a security protocol developed by

Open Whisper Systems, a company that owns a fully secure messaging app signal and it’s very

good.

WhatsApp architecture is in good scalability. The Server is designed in Erlang, Code is pushed

every day, SSL socket has been used as the protocol to the WhatsApp pools, double authentication

system has been used to login and technology of system health has been implemented to support

message queue length as users are increasing every day.

The uniqueness of this project stems from the fact that WhatsApp's objective, in accordance with

the proposed project, goes beyond where it has been most used. As previously mentioned,

WhatsApp technology has been applied in the context of crypto-messaging, and very minimal

explorations have been performed outside this practice area. As such, the proposed research will

provide more knowledge on how this WhatsApp approach can be used to protect other messaging

applications and those exposed to the same security threats.

In addition to providing critical information to the researcher and answering the underlying

research questions to achieve the objectives set, the results will be essential for others. To begin

with, the research will be of crucial use to potential users, students and programmers because the

timestamp function can help to evaluate the timing of the encryption used in the messaging

application. This implies that the general ledger system can be used in the audit process. Recently,

WhatsApp was hacked. Spyware took control of a phone after a simple call was discovered.

Security of WhatsApp 2

The research will also help to provide more information on the technology used by hackers and a

potential protection system that can be implemented to protect users' privacy. The study will also

be useful for those who focus on learning the technology used by WhatsApp to secure the

application.

References

Cohn-Gordon, K., Cremers, C., Dowling, B., Garratt, L., & Stebila, D. (2017). A Formal Security

Analysis of the Signal Messaging Protocol. 2017 IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy

(EuroS&P). doi:10.1109/eurosp.2017.27