As of: March 17, 2024, 12:59 p.m
By: Sandra Sporer
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A WhatsApp change required by an EU directive could lead to problems with end-to-end encryption.
© Antonio Guillem/IMAGO
The Digital Markets Act (DMA) has come into force.
WhatsApp must now enable users to be contacted from other messengers.
However, there is a problem with this.
Kassel – The basic idea of the Digital Markets Act (DMA) is good.
The new regulation is intended to ensure fairer competition in digital services and better opportunities for new competitors.
For WhatsApp, this means that Telegram or Signal users must also have the opportunity to write messages to WhatsApp users directly from their apps.
However, experts see a major problem.
The new regulation could potentially jeopardize the security of end-to-end encryption, as
chip.de
reports.
DMA brings innovation to WhatsApp – end-to-end encryption security potentially at risk
Guaranteeing this when communicating between different messenger services is an enormous challenge.
WhatsApp parent company Meta is also aware of this.
“Interoperability is a technical challenge - even if you concentrate on the basic functions required by the DMA,” says an article on the topic on the
Engineering at Meta
website .
However, the group does not only see the implementation of this task as its responsibility.
Rather, guaranteeing the safety of users is “a shared task,” it continues.
“We will therefore continue to work with third parties to provide the safest and best experience for our users.”
According to online security experts, the compatibility of different encryption standards is a major problem
Many cryptographers share Meta's concern about the viability of secure encryption between apps.
According to
futurezone.de
, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) criticized as early as 2022 that interoperability was not possible without unacceptable compromises in data protection and security.
The non-governmental US organization advocates for fundamental rights in the information age.
“Trying to reconcile two different cryptographic architectures is simply not feasible;
one side or the other will have to make significant changes,”
The Verge
quotes Steven Bellovin, a professor of computer science at Columbia University.
The decryption and subsequent re-encryption proposed by the DMA is also not a solution for the experts.
This would create a vulnerability where messages could be intercepted without being decrypted.
Another change, however, should please users.
In the future, you can use two WhatsApp accounts on one device – under one condition.
Another innovation is related to a symbol that disappears after a few seconds.
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sp
)