The notable exception among popular messaging apps is Apple's iMessage, but it's not available for Android handsets. Many fail to implement perfect forward secrecy, which uses a different key for each message or session to ensure that an adversary who intercepts a key can't use it to decrypt old messages. all of whatsapp’s 1 billion users, when running the latest version of the app on iphone, a google android device, nokia or blackberry, will send and receive messages, attachments and voice calls. Most other mobile apps haven't done much better, as a recent scorecard of 39 apps compiled by the Electronic Frontier Foundation attests. Whatsapp, which Facebook recently acquired for $19 billion, has itself been criticized for a series of crypto blunders only spooks in the National Security Agency would love. Some have worried about WhatsApp mucking up those benefits by using its own proprietary software, but Open Whisper Systems' Moxie Marlinspike tells Pando that his company worked with WhatsApp on the integration for the last six months, leading him to think it's sound. Until now, most popular messaging apps for smartphones have offered woefully inadequate protections against eavesdropping. Instead, it partnered with Open Whisper Systems, a security company that develops open source encryption software that can be used by anyone who wants to add it to their messaging platforms. This makes WhatsApp not only the most popular chat app on the planet, but also one that is taking significant steps to protect its users around the world. In a coup for privacy advocates, strong end-to-end encryption is coming to Whatsapp, a cross-platform instant messaging app with more than 500 million installations on the Android platform alone. (A WhatsApp spokesperson declined Pando's request for comment on this story.) So it's a good thing the company isn't asking users to trust that it was able to add end-to-end encryption on its own. The Signal protocol found in WhatsApp and developed by Open Whispers Systems is free and open source, opening it up to public scrutiny which, ultimately, results in a stronger, more secure tool.
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