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End-to-end encryption

On November 18, 2014, Open Whisper Systems
announced a partnership with WhatsApp to
provide end-to-end encryption by integrating the
encryption protocol used in Signal into every
WhatsApp customer platform, Open Whisper
Systems said it has already integrated the protocol into the latest WhatsApp client for
Android and that support for other clients, group/media messages, and key verification
will come soon after, WhatsApp confirmed the partnership to reporters but there was
no announcement or documentation about the encryption feature on the official
website and other requests for comment were rejected.

In April 2015, German magazine Heist Security used ARP spoofing to confirm that the
protocol had been applied to Android messages and that WhatsApp messages to or
from iPhones running iOS were still not end-to-end encrypted.

They expressed concern that regular WhatsApp users are still unable to distinguish
between end-to-end encrypted messages and regular messages.

On April 5, 2016, WhatsApp and Open Whisper Systems announced that they had
finished adding "end-to-end" encryption to every form of communication on
WhatsApp and that users could now verify each other's keys. Users were also given the
option to enable the trust mechanism on first use so that they would be notified if the
reporter key changed. According to the white paper released with the announcement,
WhatsApp messages are encrypted using the signal protocol. WhatsApp calls are
encrypted using Real-Time Secure Transfer Protocol (SRTP).

End-to-end encrypted chats have their own security code, which is used to verify that
the calls and messages you send to that chat are end-to-end encrypted, and this code
can be found on the contact information screen, such as a "QR" code and a 60-digit
number.

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