A few weeks ago, The Guardian reported on a so-called WhatsApp “backdoor.”

几周前，《卫报》 报道了所谓的WhatsApp“后门”。

This brought a flurry of high profile security experts into the conversation, starting with Moxie Marlinspike, who helped create the encryption protocol that WhatsApp uses.

从Moxie Marlinspike开始，这引起了一大批知名安全专家的讨论，后者帮助创建了WhatsApp使用的加密协议。

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The Guardian reacted by publishing an opinion piece by Tobias Boelter, the researcher who discovered the flaw.

作为回应，《卫报》发表了发现该漏洞的研究员托比亚斯·博尔特(Tobias Boelter)的观点文章 。

Some other security researchers have since written some thorough and insightful points about The Guardian’s article.

此后，其他一些安全研究人员就《卫报》的文章写了一些透彻而有见地的观点 。

Basically, the WhatsApp “backdoor” vulnerability brought up by The Guardian is not a backdoor per se. And the flaw had been known since April 2016.

基本上，《卫报》带来的WhatsApp“后门”漏洞本身并不是后门。 自2016年4月以来就知道该漏洞。

什么是后门？ (What exactly is a backdoor?)

Before we dive into the argument, it might be worth spending a bit of time explaining what exactly a backdoor is. This word has been used a lot over the past few years.

在我们深入讨论之前，可能值得花一些时间来解释到底是什么后门。 在过去的几年中，这个词已经被大量使用。

Below is a concise explanation of backdoors by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF):

以下是电子前沿基金会(EFF)对后门的简要说明 ：

It was originally used — along with “trapdoor” — throughout the 1980s to refer to secret accounts and/or passwords created to allow someone unknown access into a system.

在1980年代，它最初与“活板门”一起使用，是指创建的秘密帐户和/或密码，以允许未知人员访问系统。

Their broader interpretation of the term today:

他们对今天的术语有更广泛的解释：

Any mechanism someone designs into a system that allows for access via bypassing normal security measures.

有人设计进入系统的任何机制 ，都可以绕过正常的安全措施进行访问。

As the EFF mentions in their article, a backdoor does not have to be secret:

正如EFF在他们的文章中提到的， 后门不一定是秘密的：

The government’s ability to bypass the Clipper Chip’s security wasn’t a secret back in the 1990s. It was part of the system’s basic design.

在1990年代，政府绕过快船芯片安全性的能力并不是什么秘密。 它是系统基本设计的一部分。

If you feel like you’d want a deeper definition of the term, you can dive into the 7,000-word long essay of security expert Jonathan Zdziarski.

如果您想对这个术语进行更深入的定义，可以深入研究安全专家Jonathan Zdziarski 撰写的长达7000字的论文 。

如果这不是后门，那又是什么？ (If this isn’t a backdoor then, then what is it?)

The usage of the word backdoor was described as “supremely inaccurate” by Open Whisper System’s (OWS) founder Moxie Marlinspike, who explained why WhatsApp has no backdoor, and how the implementation of the end-to-end encryption protocol in fact detects man-in-the-middle attacks:

Open Whisper System(OWS)的创始人Moxie Marlinspike将后门一词描述为“极不准确”，他解释了 WhatsApp没有后门的原因，以及端到端加密协议的实现实际上如何检测到人-中间攻击 ：

The fact that WhatsApp handles key changes is not a “backdoor,” it is how cryptography works. Any attempt to intercept messages in transmit by the server is detectable by the sender, just like with Signal, PGP, or any other end-to-end encrypted communication system.

WhatsApp处理关键更改的事实并非“后门”，而是密码学的工作原理。 与信号，PGP或任何其他端到端加密通信系统一样，发送方可以检测到服务器拦截传输消息的任何尝试。

By the way, an “attempt to intercept messages” is only detectable if you activate “show security notification” (In WhatsApp, go to: Settings > Account > Security > show security notifications: on).

顺便说一句，只有在激活“显示安全通知”后才能检测到“试图拦截消息”(在WhatsApp中，转到：“设置”>“帐户”>“安全”>“显示安全通知：打开”)。

Then Moxie explains why this is solely a design decision to improve the usability of WhatsApp:

然后Moxie解释了为什么这仅仅是提高WhatsApp可用性的设计决定：

The only question it might be reasonable to ask is whether these safety number change notifications should be “blocking” or “non-blocking.” In other words, when a contact’s key changes [this happens when a user reinstalls the app or changes phones], should WhatsApp require the user to manually verify the new key before continuing, or should WhatsApp display an advisory notification and continue without blocking the user.

唯一合理的问题是这些安全号码更改通知应该是“阻止”还是“非阻止”。 换句话说，当联系人的密钥发生更改时(当用户重新安装应用程序或更改电话时会发生这种情况)，WhatsApp应该要求用户在继续操作之前手动验证新密钥，还是应WhatsApp显示建议性通知并继续而不阻止用户。

Given the size and scope of WhatsApp’s user base, we feel that their choice to display a non-blocking notification is appropriate. It provides transparent and cryptographically guaranteed confidence in the privacy of a user’s communication, along with a simple user experience. The choice to make these notifications “blocking” would in some ways make things worse. That would leak information to the server about who has enabled safety number change notifications and who hasn’t, effectively telling the server who it could MITM transparently and who it couldn’t; something that WhatsApp considered very carefully.

考虑到WhatsApp用户群的规模和范围，我们认为他们选择显示非阻塞通知是适当的。 它为用户通信的私密性提供了透明且通过密码保证的信心，以及简单的用户体验。 使这些通知“阻止”的选择在某些方面会使情况变得更糟。 这将向服务器泄漏有关谁启用了安全号码更改通知以及谁没有启用安全号码更改通知的信息，从而有效地告诉服务器谁可以透明地进行MITM以及谁不能进行MITM。 WhatsApp非常仔细地考虑过的事情。

Note that OWS is the company that built the end-to-end encryption protocol that WhatsApp uses.

请注意，OWS是构建WhatsApp使用的端到端加密协议的公司。

Why I told my friends to stop using WhatsApp and TelegramEven with end-to-end encryption Big Brother is still in your phone: metadatamedium.freecodecamp.com

为什么我告诉我的朋友 即使使用端到端加密 也要停止使用WhatsApp和Telegram ，Big Brother仍在您的手机中：metadata.freecodecamp.com

并非所有人都同意 (Not everyone agrees)

Most experts agree that there is no a backdoor, but Tobias Boelter argues there is actually a flaw — more precisely a vulnerability to a man-in-the-middle attack that can be performed because of a retransmission vulnerability. He published a blog post outlining the flaw.

大多数专家都认为，没有 后门程序，但Tobias Boelter认为实际上存在一个缺陷-更确切地说是由于重新传输漏洞而导致的中间人攻击的漏洞。 他发表了一篇博客文章，概述了该缺陷。

But the flaw that The Guardian misleadingly reported in January 2017 as a backdoor was actually known of since April 2016.

但实际上，自2016年4月以来，人们就知道了《卫报》于2017年1月误导为后门程序的漏洞。

Back in April 2016, Facebook even acknowledged the flaw and replied to white-hat report from Boelter:

早在2016年4月，Facebook甚至承认了该漏洞并回复了Boelter的白帽报告：

“[…] We were previously aware of the issue and might change it in the future, but for now it’s not something we’re actively working on changing.[…]”

“ [...]我们以前已经意识到了这个问题，并且可能会在将来进行更改，但是现在我们还没有积极地致力于解决这个问题。[...]”

卫报的误导性报告 (The Guardian’s misleading report)

As Alex Muffett outlines in his article, this core argument of the Guardian’s article is just that the surveillance will ultimately win. In the process, it got its main facts wrong.

正如Alex Muffett在他的文章中概述的那样，《卫报》文章的核心论点只是监视将最终获胜。 在此过程中，它弄错了主要事实。

“Nobody has benefited from this article, except the author, the newspaper, and the state surveillance industry as a whole.” — Alex Muffet

“除了作者，报纸和整个国家监视行业以外，没有人从这篇文章中受益。” —亚历克斯·莫菲特

The Guardian’s report is questionable. As a mea culpa, they invited Tobias Boelter, the security researcher who discovered the flaw, to write a column. Boelter set out to describe what the vulnerability is and why it matters:

监护人的报告值得怀疑。 作为Mea culpa，他们邀请了发现漏洞的安全研究员Tobias Boelter撰写专栏。 Boelter着手描述漏洞是什么以及其重要性：

A user’s public key can be used to encrypt messages which can then only be made readable again with the associated secret key. A difficult problem in secure communication is getting your friend’s public keys. Apps such as WhatsApp and Signal make the process of getting those keys easy for you by storing them on their central servers and allowing your app to download the public keys of your contacts automatically.

用户的公共密钥可用于加密消息，然后只能使用关联的密钥再次使其可读。 安全通信中的一个难题是获取朋友的公共密钥。 通过将诸如WhatsApp和Signal的应用程序存储在中央服务器上，并允许您的应用程序自动下载联系人的公共密钥，您可以轻松地获得这些密钥。

The problem here is that the WhatsApp server could potentially lie about the public keys. Instead of giving you your friend’s key, it could give you a public key belonging to a third party, such as the government.

这里的问题是WhatsApp服务器可能与公钥有关。 与其给您朋友的钥匙，不如给您一个属于第三方(例如政府)的公钥。

And he also explained how WhatsApp failed to sufficiently inform users of their option to be notified when keys change, and to verify their keys with friends:

他还解释了WhatsApp如何无法充分告知用户他们的选项，以便在更改密钥时得到通知，并无法与朋友验证其密钥：

You should be notified when sent a friend’s new public key, and given the option to validate again that this new key indeed belongs to your friend and not some other party. This behavior is called “blocking”. The problem with WhatsApp is that you are not given this option.

发送给朋友的新公钥时，应该通知您，并可以选择再次验证此新密钥确实属于您的朋友而不是其他任何一方。 此行为称为“阻止”。 WhatsApp的问题在于没有为您提供此选项。

Instead, your WhatsApp will automatically accept this new key and resend all “in transit” messages (those marked with only one tick), encrypted with the new, potentially malicious key. This behavior is called “non-blocking”.

相反，您的WhatsApp将自动接受此新密钥并重新发送所有“传输中”消息(仅标记有一个勾号的消息)，并使用新的潜在恶意密钥进行加密。 这种行为称为“非阻塞”。

Again, you can enable the “show security notifications” in WhatsApp’s setting — or switch to Signal, OWS’s own secure messaging tool.

同样，您可以在WhatsApp的设置中启用“显示安全通知”， 或切换到 OWS自己的安全消息传递工具Signal 。

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方便隐私 (Convenience over privacy)

Whoever is right — this whole debate is happening because many users favor network effects, convenience, and usability over privacy.

谁是对的–整个辩论之所以在进行是因为许多用户偏爱网络效果 ，便利性和可用性而不是隐私。

This argument was also corroborated by Frederic Jacobs, a former Signal staffer:

前Signal员工Frederic Jacobs也证实了这一观点：

But again, Tobias Boelter refutes the User Experience VS security argument:

但是，Tobias Boelter再次驳斥了“用户体验VS”安全性论点：

Signal chooses to handle key changes with blocking and so does not have this vulnerability, but WhatsApp chooses to go with non-blocking and therefore has it. So how are they different? How more difficult is Signal to use?

Signal选择使用阻止来处理关键更改，因此没有此漏洞，但是WhatsApp选择使用非阻止，因此具有此功能。 那么它们有何不同？ 使用信号有多困难？

I’ll leave to you to decide.

我让你决定。

The questions we are left with are:

我们剩下的问题是：

• Will privacy and security prevail over convenience and UX?
  隐私和安全性会优先于便捷性和用户体验吗？
• What will prompt that shift? (or what is already prompting that shift)?
  什么会促使这种转变？ (或已经促使这种转变的原因)？

然后是元数据... (And then there’s metadata…)

While it’s great to have security experts raising questions over the security of ubiquitous messaging applications, I think we are still missing the bigger picture. WhatsApp collects extensive metadata about its users’ communication.

尽管让安全专家对无处不在的消息传递应用程序的安全性提出疑问是很棒的，但我认为我们仍然没有看到更大的前景。 WhatsApp收集有关其用户通信的大量元数据。

As I mentioned in my previous post, end-to-end encryption can be of little help if we want to know what messages are about. Using end-to-end encryption does not prevent messaging services from collecting metadata.

正如我在上一篇文章中提到的那样 ，如果我们想知道消息的内容，那么端到端加密几乎没有帮助。 使用端到端加密不会阻止消息传递服务收集元数据。

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翻译自: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/dont-be-fooled-by-the-guardian-s-misleading-reporting-whatsapp-s-encryption-works-just-fine-if-you-d2a9a3ef6731/