Engineers warned #Meta that nations can monitor chats; staff fear usrael is using this trick to pick assassination targets in Gaza.
https://archive.ph/o1ld8
#fb #Facebook #WhatsApp #why
https://archive.ph/o1ld8
#fb #Facebook #WhatsApp #why
archive.ph
WhatsApp Vulnerability Lets Governments See Who You Message
archived 23 May 2024 18:05:54 UTC
🔴 Using #WhatsApp helps the israeli army pick targets in Gaza
In April 2024, +972 Magazine journalist Yuval Abraham revealed the existence of Lavender AI: a system that automatically picks bombing targets. Lavender collects information on most of the 2.3 million residents of Gaza through a system of mass surveillance, then assesses the likelihood that each particular person is active in Hamas or PIJ, giving almost every single person in Gaza a rating from 1 to 100.
The article said that the current commander of Unit 8200 wrote in a guide book for Lavender AI that the features being used to select targets include “being in a WhatsApp group with a known militant, changing cell phone every few months, and changing addresses frequently.”
“The sources told +972 and Local Call that, during the first weeks of the war, the army almost completely relied on Lavender.” Israel has deployed additional automated systems, e.g., ‘Where's Daddy’ signals when a target has entered his family home.
Last week, The Intercept wrote that many WhatsApp employees fear that Israel has been using a vulnerability based on traffic analysis. According to their assessment: “[Deep Packet] Inspection and analysis of network traffic is completely invisible to us, yet it reveals the connections between our users: who is in a group together, who is messaging who, and (hardest to hide) who is calling who”... [A typical threat is due to peer-to-peer calls between users, which can be disabled on Telegram since many years ago but on WhatsApp only since Nov 8, 2023 !]
And worse ⬇
In April 2024, +972 Magazine journalist Yuval Abraham revealed the existence of Lavender AI: a system that automatically picks bombing targets. Lavender collects information on most of the 2.3 million residents of Gaza through a system of mass surveillance, then assesses the likelihood that each particular person is active in Hamas or PIJ, giving almost every single person in Gaza a rating from 1 to 100.
The article said that the current commander of Unit 8200 wrote in a guide book for Lavender AI that the features being used to select targets include “being in a WhatsApp group with a known militant, changing cell phone every few months, and changing addresses frequently.”
“The sources told +972 and Local Call that, during the first weeks of the war, the army almost completely relied on Lavender.” Israel has deployed additional automated systems, e.g., ‘Where's Daddy’ signals when a target has entered his family home.
Last week, The Intercept wrote that many WhatsApp employees fear that Israel has been using a vulnerability based on traffic analysis. According to their assessment: “[Deep Packet] Inspection and analysis of network traffic is completely invisible to us, yet it reveals the connections between our users: who is in a group together, who is messaging who, and (hardest to hide) who is calling who”... [A typical threat is due to peer-to-peer calls between users, which can be disabled on Telegram since many years ago but on WhatsApp only since Nov 8, 2023 !]
And worse ⬇