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Comment by te_chris | Hacker News Reader

For those who don't know, newspapers often have a Reader's editor whose job it is is to criticise and be the voice of the readers inside the newspaper. In this case, this is written by that person for the Guardian after what would appear to be a thorough investigation of the matter.

There's a lot of people here saying this should have happened faster, they're likely right, but also, given how extensive and thorough this is, it is more likely an example of how old-school editorial rigour just takes a lot of time.

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6 months isn't just "a lot of time". 6 months is "let's wait until everyone completely forgets about this and hope we can slide the apology under the radar".

I feel that it took long because the security "issue" is not discussed on technical merits anymore.

The technical side of the study is very well understood by practically anyone. People have different type of opinions on the matter not because they misinterpret the technical details but because they have different expectations on how the privacy situation will end up being for different groups in the light of this knowledge.

So all of this makes it way harder to define if the story was overblown or not. Apparently Guardian editors ended up thinking that it was indeed, after giving it a long consideration. This is not a technical fact (and it cannot be), it is just their interpretation of it (and also the interpretation of many security experts but that's not the point).

Could you explain why you believe this is about opinions and interpretations, not the technical facts? I disagree with that assertion, but would really be interested to know if there is something I am missing.

Because technically a "flaw" in the system, however impractical to be exploited, did exist and it would be correct to point to that fact. Discussion of if this reaction is overblown and if it would direct users to more dangerous methods of communication is where it stops being technical.

It could be that I am the one who is missing something. That's why we are discussing here, right? :)

Sure, but I think you might be missing an important aspect. The system is designed to not block communications upon key changes, just display an alert so the other user knows (And can verify out of band if they are about to discuss a sensitive topic). The initial "vulnerability" seemed to just be based on an opinion that it would be more secure if it did indeed block communications (until manual verification was performed) upon key changes.

You are correct that it is impractical to "exploit" the chosen design, I think the bigger issue their portrayal of this as a vulnerability rather than a security suggestion.

If I'm not mistaken, they called this a "flaw", not a "vulnerability", which definitely wouldn't have been correct. I personally would have preferred "trade-off" but I'm honestly not sure about the word "flaw".

My general point is, even if they made some technical errors as well, their consideration, I believe, was more about the consequences of their interpretation.

They called it a "backdoor", and reported it as a game-over vulnerability. Everything since then has been trying to walk the claim back.

> They called it a "backdoor", and reported it as a game-over vulnerability.

I didn't remember that and it seems to have been removed from the article (with a note on the end which I have missed). Well, that's just sensationalism and must have been picked up way earlier in a sane review process. I stand corrected.

"The original article – now amended and associated with the conclusions of this review – led to follow-up coverage, some of which sustained the wrong impression given at the outset. The most serious inaccuracy was a claim that WhatsApp had a “backdoor”, an intentional, secret way for third parties to read supposedly private messages. This claim was withdrawn within eight hours of initial publication online, but withdrawn incompletely. The story retained material predicated on the existence of a backdoor, including strongly expressed concerns about threats to freedom, betrayal of trust and benefits for governments which surveil. In effect, having dialled back the cause for alarm, the Guardian failed to dial back expressions of alarm."

From this linked article.

You can't separate the technical facts from the interpretation though, because they only brought it up to interpret it incorrectly.

This is not the biggest flaw! It was that messages that are in flight (sent, but not yet delivered) still get delivered if the key changes. Only after delivery does the sender get notified of the key change. The last time, I gave example where a protest organizer (Bob) is detained by the (secret) police in the period leading up to a protest, and denied access to their password-protected phone that's switched off. All the police has to do is wait for a while, then pop the SIM into a new phone and presto, they get all the incriminating messages that were sent by co-conspirator Alice while Bob was detained. Only after delivery onto the police phone does Alice get notified that Bob's key has changed.

The "flaw" was a choice of default preferences which are fundamentally a UX/security tradeoff: WhatsApp did not notify users about key change events by default.

Those who value maximizing security at all costs, even to UX, disliked this default.

WhatsApp was trying to switch end-to-end encryption to on-by-default for its over a billion users. An understandable requirement of doing so was to ship E2E encryption in such a way that did not involve changes to the UX.

Whether or not this tradeoff is the best compromise is certainly debatable, but it is just that: a tradeoff, not a "backdoor", not a "vulnerability", and not a "flaw". It's a deliberate design decision.

Why is it not a "backdoor", not a "vulnerability", or "flaw"? Well, let's examine what would happen if the default were reversed: let's say users were notified by default. Would this keep them more secure?

I have doubts. These notifications are not high signal or immediately actionable. They do not indicate an attack. They indicate "a key changed" and whether or not that's abnormal is up to users to determine. The overwhelming majority of these events will be innocuous, leading to alert fatigue. It's also unclear how well an average end user would even understand or be able to react to these alerts.

I am certainly willing to give WhatsApp's UX designers the benefit of the doubt here. UX design is hard and the tinfoil hat crowd saying things to the contrary have a history of producing unusable software by demanding security misfeatures which tick off a box on a threat model without actually improving user outcomes.

While some people in the tinfoil hat crowd seem to think bombarding users with a bunch of low-signal security alerts is a good idea, practitioners working with IDS/SIEM systems probably have a different opinion: that low quality / low signal alerts are worthless.

There are solutions to providing high-quality signals about key change events to users without asking them to manually confirm key fingerprints in person, but they are complicated, haven't been largely deployed, and it's still unclear how they'll work...

I'm talking about CONIKS and Google Key Transparency, which implement logs which users' own devices can monitor to discover changes to their keys as advertised through a key server. These systems can ask a very simple question to users when this happened: "Did you just log in on another device?" If they didn't, the user can select no and publish an alert indicating they were compromised.

The clever part is that the server doesn't know if the user has the setting on or off, so it can't cheat the security without risking detection.

The public editor, in private communication, attributed some of this delay to his difficulty in finding independent experts who hadn't signed the open letter.

Apparently if you're so wrong that an entire field disagrees with you, you can get anything printed in the Guardian.

It's a kind of interesting problem to have. I can see the logic in trying to find someone not on the letter to verify that what it says is true... but when literally everyone agrees, the logic falls apart.

I suspect this might be the side effect of excessive CYA. I'm not happy with it, but there have been so, so many articles that get the basic premises of tech completely wrong that I think I'd still rather them take an excessive amount of time checking than publish another ill-informed piece.

I really do not see the logic in seeking input from those who did not sign the letter. The reason I signed was specifically to help show them that a very large number of infosec experts disagreed with the reporting (And I am sure that is the reason many others signed).

Few of the people on the list have any, at least obvious, position outside of their field. The purpose of seeking input is to make sure that this isn't 72 "climate change deniers" in fringe positions or with their own "custom" organisations.

I understand what you are trying to say, but you might want to check out the full list. It contains people who have various strong opinions on different nuanced security related topics, yet all agree regarding this. I think that is why it is strange to brush aside the signatories.

> It contains people who have various strong opinions on different nuanced security related topics, yet all agree regarding this.

But it takes a while to verify this if you're not already familiar with it (I'd argue that's a reason why they shouldn't have published the article to begin with, but w/e)

The public editor wouldn't know any of that. It's pretty much thier job to not take someone at thier word. Even if he could verify each person's contribution, their position in the field and the relevance of these facts to this issue he still can't be sure that this isn't e.g. some fight between two sides and that this group isn't in minority to 172 other experts that think differently. It's out-of-band verification if you so will.

Come on. Not everyone in the field signed the letter.

Don't play dumb, David. The list of signers is extraordinary and surprising, especially to people like us who actually work in the field. This isn't a bunch of random Twitter people.

More importantly: your comment leaves the impression that there were notable people in the field who had a problem with the letter. If an expert working in messaging security didn't sign it, you and I both know that's probably just because they weren't aware of it (or, at the time, The Guardian's story).

Maybe I'm wrong (or lacking context), but FWIW I read baby's comment to mean that the public editor's claim that he had difficulty finding non-signers is silly.

It's not silly. I am not at all surprised that The Guardian was ultimately unsuccessful at finding someone reputable that works in this field to contradict the open letter.

> attributed some of this delay to his difficulty in finding independent experts who hadn't signed the open letter.

They emailed me asking why I hadn't signed and if it meant that I didn't agree with the petition.

Funny thing, two reasons why I hadn't signed. First, it was because I only caught the petition when it was already deep with many people I respect a lot and I felt I added nothing

And second, I was conflicted because i'd previously had a disagreement with The Guardian on another story that got kicked up all the way to editorial and I felt was never adequately resolved and was largely swept under the rug.

After that experience I didn't feel that The Guardian were genuinely going to make a best effort to resolve what was their own mess, again.

edit: to add, it drives me fucking nuts every time I hear someone repeat "I heard WhatsApp is insecure". Thanks again, Gruardian.

More likely that The Guardian weren't very good at finding any experts before or after the story. Apparently if you don't expose a distinguishable interface to the rest of the world journalist won't find you.

I'm just glad to know that their ombudsman has safely returned from their vacation.[0] Some of us were getting worried.

[0] https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/826872065009422336

It's their institutional lack of "old-school editorial rigour" that got them into this mess. The article gives no indication of what they have done or will do to prevent such poor reporting going forward. In the six months it took them to publish this they could have taken some steps to ensure their team has the resources it needs to better report on these areas in the future. Unfortunately, I think this op ed is too little too late for the Guardian as far as their credibility is concerned.

It was already too late for The Guardian's credibility when they reported that Mark Duggan was 'unarmed' before the 2011 riots.

Here's their apology: https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/media/201...

Actually, and sadly, very few newspapers still have ombudsmen.

Like the NYT, which just eliminated their public editor role.

Oh. Did they give any reasons?

"Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow"

Although, what Sulzberger actually said was:

“Our followers on social media and our readers across the internet have come together to collectively serve as a modern watchdog, more vigilant and forceful than one person could ever be,” he wrote. “Our responsibility is to empower all of those watchdogs, and to listen to them, rather than to channel their voice through a single office.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/31/business/media/new-york-t...

A world-weary cynical read:

"Our followers on social media and readers can be ignored a lot easier than a guy in our office, so when complaints come in, we can simply sweep them under the rug"

I would greatly disagree with that. The rest of the world can see complaints on social media, whereas no one knows if the guy in the office is being ignored.

The designated commissar could also use twitter too.

Eh, one person's twitter can be ignored.

These days people get so worked up on social media anytime a brand does anything (i.e. people getting mad a cinnabon for their carrie fisher bun pic - http://cbsnews3.cbsistatic.com/hub/i/r/2016/12/27/a9c2ac0c-3...). I think social media can serve as a watchdog for more important issues, too.

That's funny, because I don't see the logic there beyond it sounding superficially like a savvy decision to cut costs and leverage the community, however the role shouldn't really be a single person in the modern era, but an advocate collating voices and ensuring the editors and writers are informed by an opposing (or descenting) voice within their ranks or you risk a form of 'group think', which I believe probably had more to do with the Guardian's error than anything else.

The New York Times retiring their ombudsman was high profile news, but is there actually a trend of (quality) newspapers removing that role from their staff? The NYT move was widely criticised by its peers (not just by the other ombudsmen, but by the newspapers themselves in their respective editorials).

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