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Comment by qetuo | Hacker News Reader

That's nice. What I really want to know is, can Mark Zuckerberg read my messages? Do WhatsApp servers have access to the private keys needed to decrypt my communications? If the answer to those questions is "yes", then it's great that we are now protected from most cybercriminals, but the NSA is probably monitoring our messages. If the answer to those questions is "no", I may actually decide to start using WhatsApp.

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They cannot read your messages. The entire idea behind this is to give them a claim of technical infeasability if they are served with a warrant. However, if there is/will be some sort of back door to cease encryption without the user's knowledge, that's another matter which really would require it being open source.

How will it being open source guarantee you that the app you downloaded from the platform's store is using the exact same code?

Jailbroken iPhones or Androids that have an accessible filesystem would give access to the installed executable.

Having this, Whatsapp would be subject to having their app disassembled and checked against the source. Sure, they could modify the executable, but it's a PR liability for them.

You can compile the binary yourself and match the SHA1 against the binary downloaded from the store. It seems quite trivial.

It's not that easy. Due to toolchain and platform differences, there is no guarantee that your compiler will produce the same binary as the official distribution. This is why deterministic, reproducible builds are a growing area of interest right now.

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