How WhatsApp is Enabling End-to-End Encrypted Backups

Tags: 2020s End-to-End Encryption

Authors: Krassovsky, Slavik and Cadden, Gabriel

Published: September 2021

URL: https://engineering.fb.com/2021/09/10/security/whatsapp-e2ee-backups/

Abstract: In September 2021 Facebook unveiled a new security feature to encrypt WhatsApp backups via end-to-end encryption in addition to their already-encrypted realtime messages. The initiative aims to provide an encrypted backup directly from Whatsapp, without having to rely on the encryption policies of cloud-based services where users could previously store backups, so that “neither WhatsApp nor the backup service provider” can access the backups and only the user has the encryption key.