So all that WhatsApp knows is Sender, Receiver and content (which is gibberish because of encryption), and like a typical post office, it does not create a copy of the content after the message is delivered. The encryption keys are exchanged between the sender and the receiver before sending the message without WhatsApp knowing about it through a cryptographic method called Diffie-Hellman key exchange.

The content (inside the envelope as in our mail example) is encrypted via encryption keys that are known only to the sender and the receiver and these keys change for every message. Like a typical post office that just looks at the envelope to deliver mail, WhatsApp only looks at the receiver ID (in this case, a device associated with a phone number) and delivers the message when the receiver comes online.

Routing information or Envelope (Sender ID, Receiver ID).

Why cannot WhatsApp enable traceability without breaking E2E?Īnand Venkatanarayanan: A message between two parties typically contains: MediaNama compiled a list of such questions (many of which users sent us via Twitter), and we’ve got them answered by independent security researcher Anand Venkatanarayanan:Įnd-to-end encryption and traceability cannot go hand-in-hand

People have raised questions about what issues WhatsApp might have in tagging messages with the identification information of a user when it collects metadata on users suggested that it is only a minor modification to end-to-end encryption for it to add that tag and questioned how WhatsApp tracks forwarded messages. Several questions have been raised about what WhatsApp can and cannot do, in an end-to-end encrypted messaging environment, after it filed a lawsuit against the Indian government over the IT Rules 2021 arguing that the rules are unconstitutional.

What is whatsapp end to end encryption