Bob Mueller's office can read the content of encrypted text messages

Edit - I did some checking on Twitter and saw screenshots of the docs[1]. Others have also confirmed that there was no decryption of messages. Informants have simply shown the messages that they preserved and it's also possible that they gained access to iCloud backups which are NOT encrypted. All is well in AES and Diffie Helman land :D

I think we need more details than this to confirm that they decrypted and read an encrypted message. I've studied Whatsapp/Signal's protocols and unless Whatsapp is blatantly not using it, then I can't see how their office is decrypting the messages.

The way this article reads, it sounds like they got their hands on the decrypted message or in some form intercepted the keys required to decrypt the messages via a device.

Either way, it doesn't seem like they got encrypted messages from Whatsapp's servers and bruteforce decrypted them.

I hope I don't have to eat these words though. (edit-I don't :D )

[1] https://twitter.com/donie/status/1003828144279838720

The implicit claim of this headline is that WhatsApp is not end-to-end secure or that somehow they have a way to interdict and decrypt the encrypted messages.

But you should read the article very carefully before making a claim like this. Indeed, anyone "can read the content of encrypted messages" once they've been decrypted.

The messages are said to have come from someone's attempt to tamper with and intimidate witnesses, using encrypted messaging apps. It's possible that these witnesses are the ones who provided the messages to Mueller's office.

Isn't it possible for the witnesses that were the receivers of these messages to have turned their message history over to the investigators? The articles seems to say that these people already reported the witness tampering, so it would be no surprise if they showed messages too.

uhhh, you mean "encrypted text messages were shared with Mueller's office"?

I feel it more likely they just had an informant.